Since the presentation of the next multi-annual financial exercise (June 2011), the European Commission has made more than 120 changes for the simplification of the EU financing government regulations dedicated to the SMEs, cities, regions and so on.
In the budget for the coming 7 years (2014-2020), the European Commission plans to allocate funds to different economic sectors in a different way focusing on outcome and performance, so that implemented projects will observe the Europe 2020 Agenda.
EU’s budget for 2011 was of EUR 140 Billion, “a small sum compared to the budgets of the 27 member states which exceed EUR 6,300 Billion. Other said, total public costs of EU27 are around 50 times higher than the EU budget. Over 94% of the European budget is dedicated to projects focusing on economic growth for the citizens, cities and the business sector”, shows a EU report, but conditions are imposed by European policies concerning the viability of projects for a sustainable growth, reducing the negative impact of climate change and improving the European connectivity.
Consequently, the European transport network is one of the best examples of the added value that the EU can offer to its citizens and member states. The full functionality of the domestic market and reaching the objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy depend on the track access and the EU financing will support the elimination of missing links and the removal of bottlenecks in the transport network. In transportation, the EU budget finances those public projects which are strongly interdependent by allocating a lot of money to the countries and regions that cannot cover it.
The transport network becomes a key factor in the economic growth as infrastructure investments create jobs (18,000 new jobs for each EUR 1 Billion invested) and in the fight against climate change, as the projects referring to more eco-friendly modes of transport receive more funds creating a favourable environment for the modal shift of freight especially to railways, the greenest transport mode for freight and people.
EU estimates that the freight transport activity will continue to grow by 82% including international maritime transport by 2050. As regards total transport vo-lumes, they will increase by 42%, railway traffic knowing the fastest growth (of approx. 50%) encouraged by a slow increase in the price of fuels, the positive effects of the market opening and the infrastructure quality growth.
Therefore, on long distances, the multimodality of freight transport has to become economically attractive for forwarders. An efficient co-modality is ne-cessary and the EU also needs corridors dedicated to the energy efficient and environmental friendly transport of freight.
Thus, railway transport will meet all demands as a UIC analysis shows (on the external costs of transport): external costs resulted from the air and road transport of freight are four times higher than of railway transport. The different reports elaborated clearly show the vital importance of railway transport which indicate that the EU should focus financing towards those projects which aim at shifting traffic to railways.
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