Brussels, 14/02/2000 (Agence Europe) - In June or September, the European Commission is to organise an international Conference on the funding of transport infrastructures in the countries candidates for accession, said Commissioner de Palacio on the occasion of the European Railway Conference. Organised in Budapest on 10 and 11 February by European railway organisations (UIC, CCFE, UNIFE) on "A Competitive Railway System for the Pan-European Area", this conference highlighted both the funding and mode of restructuring the railway industry in applicant countries.
The Commissioner, as well as the railway organisations, placed emphasis on the importance on interconnections between the railway systems of the EU and those of the applicant countries, and, to that effect, the role of the ten pan-European corridors defined in June 1997 and the network provided for in the Tina programme for the Eastern countries, complementing the EU's TEN network. Regarding this, the railway organisations welcomed the support provided by the EU through its pre-accession instruments (Phare and Ispa will, by 2006, devote 520 million euro a year to transport infrastructures), but also called on the EU and international banks to actually carry out the rail projects provided for by the Tina programme. Commissioner de Palacio, for her part, placed emphasis on the great financial effort candidate countries themselves had to make (90 billion euro by 2015), corresponding in fact to that provided by Member States in the 1960s 1970s.
In the conclusions adopted at the end of the Conference, emphasis was also placed on: 1) the adaptation of the legislation of applicant countries to that of the EU. According to the Conference, it is particularly important to make a distinction between infrastructure management and transport services, granting management autonomy to railway companies, to make a distinction between the role of the States and that of enterprises; 2) for the restructuring of railway companies, to take special account of the particular situation of Eastern countries: "it would be an illusion to hope for a fully effective result from a simple application of existing models to have emerged from the acquis communautaire, without consideration of the national context".