This month the European Commission published online new information on its progress in implementing the The Trans-European Transport Networks, "TEN-T". The The TEN-T initiative comprises 30 priority projects which should be completed by 2020 and of these 30 priority projects, 18 are railway projects, 3 are mixed rail-road projects, 2 are inland waterways transport projects and one refers to motorways of the sea.

Financing:

There are several reasons for which projects can be lagging behind schedule:

1. Lack of financing and/or financial guarantees.
2. Lack of coordination, project preparation and planning.
3. Regulatory constraints. Based on the revised information from the Member States, the overall cost of the network is EUR 900 billion and nearly EUR 500 billion still needs to be invested until 2020. Completion of the priority projects alone requires more than EUR 250 billion by 2020.

The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and Cohesion Fund resources also provide importantly 11% of the total investment needs. The European Investment Bank (EIB) also has provided 18% of total TEN-T funding before 2007 and almost 14% estimated for 2007-2013. Other questions to be asked included:

• Is the EU financial intervention providing sufficient leverage for realising the main crossborder sections and bottlenecks on the TEN-T network?
• How can other public financing schemes, like cross-financing, be developed?

Coordination:

The report identified that infrastructure projects are complex processes which demand cooperation among a range of partners. For projects of European Interest such as the Priority Projects, such as T-TEN projects, and especially the cross-border sections, the partners involved are multiplied by a factor two or more, depending on the number of countries involved. Other questions to be asked included:

• How far can the integrated corridor approach be extended to all Priority Projects?
• In particular, should corridor structures be set-up? How should these structures be managed? What is the role of the EU?

Project preparation and planning: Regulatory Issues

Some elements have begun to emerge, that prove more problematic, from different TEN-T studies (e.g. Ex-post evaluation of TEN-T MIP 2001-2006 and ex-ante evaluation of TEN-T MAP 2007-2013) and research. They range from the administrative capacity of the Member States (planning, programming) to the quality of the project management processes. At the core of the difficulties are often issues of a lack of pragmatism and realism regarding both investment and deadlines. However, progress is being made steadily as shown by the creation of 50 new jobs, last April 2008, in association with the T-TEN projects. Other questions to be asked included:

• What steps can Member States and project promoters take to ensure regulatory issues are identified and tackled at the earliest possible stage?
• Can the EU provide more assistance/guidance to help in this task?