Connecting Europe

An investment plan worth 50 billion euro to improve European networks of transport, energy and digital networks is proposed by the EU Commission, according to which “Investments aimed at the main infrastructures will help to create jobs and boost Europe’s competitiveness”. The EU funds, planned over a period of several years (2014-2020) and hence relatively modest in annual terms, would be used to put in place mechanisms aimed at involving investors from the private and public sectors at the national level to help finance the projects envisaged. At the same time the financial instrument of the Project Bond is also launched.Mobility, development of networks. The “Connecting Europe Facility” – that’s the overall name of the proposal – “will fund projects that complete the missing links” in relation to road and rail mobility, ports and airports, and also gas pipelines, oil pipelines and broad band for communications and “make Europe’s economy greener by promoting cleaning transport modes, high speed broad band connections and facilitating the use of renewable energy”. The development of energy networks ought in addition to make “the internal energy market more integrated, reducing the dependency of the EU” on third countries. To find private funds to be added to the public funds to finance these projects, the Commission has launched its Project Bond initiative, in other words loans in the form of bonds for the funding of individual projects. The aim of the Commission – which now awaits the co-decisions of EU Council and Parliament to turn its proposals into action – is that this initiative should come into effect already in 2012.Employment and single market. The President of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, declares: “The Connecting Europe Facility and the Project Bond initiative are a perfect demonstration of the added value that Europe can provide. These proposals will help to build the roads, railways, energy grids and pipelines, and broadband networks that are so important to our citizens and businesses. We are closing the missing links in Europe’s infrastructure networks that otherwise would not be built”. Barroso adds: “This investment will generate growth and jobs and at the same time make work and travel easier for millions of European citizens”. In the view of the Executive, “by placing the emphasis on intelligent, sustainable and totally interconnected transport, energy and digital networks, the Connecting Europe Facility will help to complete the single market”. The Commission has selected those projects that are at a more advanced stage, effectively realizable and “in which further investments allocated by the EU could prove more remunerative”.Ports, airports, railways. As regards the transport sector, the Commission has adopted “a proposal to transform the existing European patchwork of European roads, railways, airports and canals into a unified transport network”, to which the name Ten-T network has been given. The new “core network” will “remove bottlenecks, upgrade infrastructure and streamline cross-border transport operations for passengers and businesses throughout the EU”. In practice, with initial investments of 31.7 billion, projects will be implemented to realize or reinforce road and rail links for 83 ports and 37 airports; the EU will support, in partnership with member states, the conversion of 15,000 km of railways into high speed. Corridor 5 from Finland to Malta, Corridor 1 from the Baltic to the Adriatic, and Corridor 6 from Genoa to Rotterdam also form part of the proposed transport network. Siim Kallas, Vice President of the Commission and Transport Commissioner, explains: “Transport is fundamental to an efficient EU economy, but vital connections are currently missing. Europe’s railways have to use 7 different gauge sizes and only 20 of our major airports and 35 of our major ports are directly connected to the rail network. Without good connections, Europe will not grow or prosper”. Altogether, the Commission considers that by 2020 investments of 500 billion euro will be needed to realize a truly European network.Energy and boad band. No less significant are plans for the energy and telecommunications sectors. In the first case 9.1 billion euro will be invested in trans-European infrastructure, “which ought to permit the objectives fixed by the EU for the climate and energy sector to be achieved by 2020” (less consumption, greater efficiency, greater recourse to “clean” sources”). The projects to be co-financed in future include an offshore network in the North Sea for the transport of the electricity produced by wind farms to the big cities; innovative solutions for the storage of spare capacity electricity; and complex projects for transporting gas from new sources of supply, such as the Caspian Sea region. In the telecommunications sector the initial investment is fixed at 9.2 billion, mainly to be allocated to broad band.