The cohesion policy of the European Union aims at reducing disparities between the levels of development of the various regions and the backwardness of the less-favoured regions. This offers financing to a wide range of actions, from infrastructure (in the field of transport, communications, energy) to human capital.
The priority of launching the Connecting Europe Facility consists in reorienting the financing by the European Union in the field of transports in order to create a real European network – not only to remove blockages in a dispersed way – but also to have a true network.
For this purpose, a new method was ela-borated based on thorough consultations with the member states and stakeholders. The objective is the creation of a European network that should connect the major economic and social centres and the important crossing points to third countries (ports, airports and terrestrial connections) and the creation of the permanent infrastructure necessary to sustain the single market and to support the competitiveness and the economic development.
The methods are based on several pha-ses. Firstly, the selection of the main hubs – which fulfil certain statistic criteria, for instance the capitals and other important economic and social centres, the big ports (volume and territorial criteria), as well as the main airports (volume and territorial criteria) and the important crossing points to third countries. Secondly, the process of connecting the respective hubs to terrestrial transport modes – railway transport, on inland waterways and road ways (among which some are already present, while others present blockages, and others lack links). Thirdly, incorporating a detailed analysis of main traffic flows – of passengers and freight. This is essential in order to define priority sections of the central network and to clearly see where the infrastructure must be modernised or built and where there are blockages that must be removed.
On this basis, a strategic central network has been defined, which makes the connection between important hubs from the strategic point of view and the multimodal routes, also taking into consideration the main traffic flows.
All projects regarding the central network represent a priority for the EU co-financing. Nevertheless, for the financing period 2014-2020, a special importance is paid to the financing of cross-border projects which have the highest added value in the EU.
Therefore, the new central network will connect 83 main European ports with railway and road connections, 37 main airports with railway connections with big cities, 15 000 km of modernised railway lines for the high-speed traffic, as well as 35 major cross-border projects for the reduction of blockages.
In addition, the new TEN-T orientations introduce a new strict legal requirement in order for the member states whose projects benefit from financing for the central network to have a legal obligation to complete those projects. This obligation means that they have to be completed by 2030 – the completion date of the central network. This legal requirement should however represent a clear stimulus so that member states could progress in the execution of transport projects.
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