Trans-European transport network: Community guidelines

This report from the Commission concerns the implementation of the Trans-European transport network guidelines (2002-2003). It provides an assessment of the development of the trans-European transport network (TEN-T) following the TEN-T guidelines set out in Decision 1692/96/EC.

The investment data contained in the report refer to the “old” and “new” Member States and to Bulgaria and Romania and a partial distinction is made between EU-15, EU-10 and EU-2 and EU-27 (all three groups of States).

The report concludes that the total investment in the TEN-T network in the EU-27 over the two year period 2002 –2003 showed that the average annual investments on the TEN-T network compared with 2000 and 2001 increased.

However, as these investments are calculated in constant prices and after discussions with representatives of the Member States, it is clear that the estimated investment in the TEN-T network can be misleading. Italy, for example, spent more than 22 billion EUR on TEN-T due to a very intensive investment period in the years 2002 and 2003. The average annual investment in these two years was almost double compared with the six previous years; additionally this EUR 22 billion represents more than 25% of the total investments in the EU- 27. Taking this fact and when analysing the investments in more detail, it is apparent that the total investments per country in comparison with GDP development – especially in the EU-15 - decreased; in Denmark for example only 0.09% of the GDP was spent for TEN-T, while in Slovenia about 1.46% of the GDP was committed for the development of the TEN-T network.

Concerning financing, it can be concluded that national public funding still contributed by far the largest part of the investments in the TEN-T network. In order to optimise the scarce Community funds and to facilitate the coordinated implementation of certain projects, in particular cross-border projects, the Commission designated, in agreement with the Member States concerned, and after having consulted the European Parliament "European Coordinators". The European Coordinator acts in the name of and on behalf of the Commission and should work to speed up the implementation of the projects of common interest.

The completion of the 30 priority projects for international traffic by 2020 in general, is on track. Thus the annual investment volume in the years 2002 and 2003 was about EUR 40 billion. The elimination of bottlenecks especially on cross-border sections is still lagging behind and needs to be improved.