Commission Welcomes Informal Agreement on TEN-T
30 May 2013
On 30 May, the European Parliament, the Irish Presidency of the Council of European Union and the European Commission reached an informal agreement on the Regulation on the Revision of the Trans-European Transport Network Guidelines.
The outcome of the negotiations constitutes a big step forward compared to what had been accomplished in the past in the field of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T).
Siim Kallas, Commission Vice-President responsible for transport (photo) welcomed the agreement on the proposals to transform the existing infrastructure of European roads, railways, airports and canals into a unified transport network. "This agreement will connect East with West and replace today’s transport patchwork with a network that is genuinely European. This is a major step towards building a new transport network that will be the backbone to boost growth and competitiveness in Europe's Single Market," he said.
The agreement establishes a core transport network to be established by 2030 to act as the backbone for transportation within the Single Market. Transport financing under the Connecting Europe Facility (for the period 2014–2020) will also focus on this core transport network, filling in cross-border missing links, removing bottlenecks and making the network smarter. Furthermore, the new core TEN-T network will be supported by a comprehensive network of routes, feeding into the core network at regional and national level. This will largely be financed by Member States, with some EU transport and regional funding possibilities, including with new innovative financing instruments. The aim is to ensure that progressively, and by 2050, the great majority of Europe's citizens and businesses will be no more than 30 minutes' travel time from this comprehensive network.
The agreement, reached in trialogue negotiations between Parliament, Council and Commission, still has to be formally approved by the Parliament Plenary and Council.
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