Brussels, 21/03/2007 (Agence Europe): After a year of hard work, the steering group for the development and coordination of European infrastructure, which is made up of all European Commissioners with relevant portfolios and is chaired by the vice-president of the Commission with responsibility for Transport, Jacques Barrot, presented a press release this Wednesday, which reports back on the state of play with each of the networks (transport, energy and telecommunications) and raises the possibility of synergies between these networks, to help to reconcile their development with environmental protection issues.
The Commission stresses that the 30 priority projects which were selected under the heading of trans-European transport networks (TETNs) promote means of transport which are the least damaging to the environment, such as rail or water. Their completion will reduce CO2 emissions generated by transport by 6.3 million tonnes a year by 2020. On the aforementioned synergies, those between the telecommunications and transport networks seem to be the most promising, with the possibility of adding telecommunications cabling to railway lines. Presenting the report, Andris Piebalgs (Energy) said: “Getting as much as possible out of these synergies is particularly important as the European Council of 9 March recommended this approach and stressed the importance of developing network interconnections”. (aby)