Despite significant investments, the European Union still lacks an interconnected transport network that is essential for promoting competitiveness and sustainable growth. In view of a single network, the Connecting Europe Facility will be the financing instrument of European projects aimed at simplifying and facilitating EU’s support to infrastructures.
By 2050, EU wants that all primary network airports to be connected to the railway network, especially high-speed, while maritime ports will have to have proper connections to the railway infrastructure as well.
However, we cannot talk about a single infrastructure outside the cities, since the primary network has to ensure efficient multimodal connections between the European capitals and other large cities. Therefore, EU’s financing for infrastructure projects will help develop cities and increase their economic level.
The proposal on the Connecting Europe Facility will have a positive impact in urban development if it manages to add the missing links as the EU plans. Under these circumstances, cities are responsible with the development and maintenance of the infrastructure (for mobility, energy and IT) and these facilities are important for the economic and socio-cultural performance of cities, countries and in the end Europe. Ci-
ties located on the TEN-T network have to be involved in planning and granting strategic investments in partnership with national authorities and this requires the establishment of the urban areas to be involved in infrastructure projects. Thus, the Connecting Europe Facility would deliver cities free access to project financing, not just to member states, to ensure a fast development of the EU network, as cities play a crucial role in the making of a single market and in adding missing links. Also, for the technical implementation of the projects, the Commission should not grant support only to member states, but to city authorities. To ensure innovative and coherent actions in the transport research segment, it is essential to initiate an efficient coordination between the investments granted through the Connecting Europe Facility and Horizon 2020, especially since the Smart Cities & Communities Initiative is continued.
Connecting Europe Facility projects have to have an interurban dimension, while as regards the return of allocated investments, “they will not be optimised unless projects are connected to origins and destinations for people and freight. The practical implication of the city administrations and transport authorities is essential in planning and granting strategic investments. To that end, we suggest the following insertion in the Connecting Europe draft regulation, namely in article 4 (on the Sector Specific Objectives): reducing missing links and improving connectivity within urban nodes to be measured by the number of new cross-border connections”, shows the Eurocities report on the Connecting Europe Facility. TEN-T projects will simply create congestion, concentrate pollution and fail to achieve the modal shift and economic benefits expected if connectivity between strategic infrastructure and urban nodes is neglected.
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