THE European Commission (EC) has announced additional funding of €6.2bn through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) for 107 new Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) projects. The projects were selected out of 353 applications under CEF transport calls which closed on January 18.
Many of the schemes involve rail projects such as Brenner Base tunnel linking Italy and Austria, Rail Baltica and the cross-border lines between Karlsruhe, Germany, and Basle, Switzerland, and between Emmerich on the Dutch border and Oberhausen, Germany.
There will also be funding for ERTMS projects on TEN-T lines and to equip the trains which operate on them in Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany and Slovakia.
“I am particularly happy that €250m will improve cross-border connections between Ukraine, Moldova, and their European Union (EU) neighbours Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland,” says the EU’s transport commissioner, Ms Adina-Ioana Vălean. “These projects will make transporting goods between the EU and Ukraine easier, reinforcing the Solidarity Lanes.”
“With these new 107 selected projects, spanning various transport modes, we reach almost €29.4bn of EU support invested since 2014 in projects implementing the EU Green Deal,” says Ms Paloma Aba Garrote, acting director of the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (Cinea). “The selected projects will deliver results contributing to shape a carbon-neutral continent.”
Under the 2021-2027 CEF transport programme, €25.8bn is available to co-fund TEN-T projects in the EU. The EC’s objective is complete the TEN-T core network by 2030 and the entire network by 2050.
The full list of the 107 TEN-T projects is available here.
