Brussels, 19/07/2005 (Agence Europe) - Although their names are already known, the Commission will officially appoint the first wave of European coordinators in charge of facilitating the implementation of various priority projects of the trans-European transport networks (TENs) on 20 July. These are Loyola de Palacio of Spain (Commission Vice President in charge of transport between 1999 in 2004), the Belgians Karel Van Miert and Etienne Davignon, the Hungarian Peter Balazs and Pavel Telicka of the Czech Republic (members of the Prodi Commission after May 2004) and Karel Vinck (former Belgian president of the Railways Community). These six- the first five of whom are former Commissioners- will each take on the job of managing one of the 30 priority projects and will help to overcome difficulties encountered in their implementation, whether these are financial in nature, related to differences of opinion between the Members States on the route or timetable, or to do with the particularly delicate issue of coordination on the cross-border trunks (see EUROPE 8914 for the allocation of the projects to each coordinator). In the virtue of decision 884/2004 29 April 2004, which lists the 30 priority projects to be completed by 2020, the Commission may, upon consultation of the European Parliament and with the agreement of the Member States, appoint European coordinators for a duration of four years. In order to guarantee their independence, the coordinators are not paid and are of a different nationality to the country in which they are overseeing the management of the project. The Commission may appoint other coordinators, depending on the difficulties encountered in the implementation of other priority projects.
On the same day, the Commission is to entrust the financial and technical management of the projects co-financed under the TEN projects to an Executive Agency. This structure, which will be external to the services of the Commission but controlled by it, will be relatively free to recruit experts, who will take over the coordination of all Community funds and work with the European coordinators. This division of work is designed to allow the Commission to concentrate on setting priorities, programming and assessments.
Lastly, the Commission is to set up a steering group for the trans-European transport, energy and telecommunications networks, to be headed up by the Commissioner for Transport, Jacques Barrot, and to include Commissioners Viviane Reding (information Society and telecommunications), Andris Piebalgs (energy), Danuta Hübner (regional policy), Dalia Grybauskaite (budget), Stavros Dimas (environment) and Joaquin Almunia (economic and monetary affairs). The objective is to reinforce coherence within the Commission, in the drafting of Community policies affecting the development of the TENs, but also to ensure the correct coordination of finances at several levels: Commission, Member States and loans from the European Investment Bank.