Changes from report parliamentary committee draft to plenary report

BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION FOR THE REGULATION

The Union needs an efficient, sustainable, multimodal and modern transport infrastructure for all modes which connects its citizens and businesses in order to support its internal market and trade, to strengthen economic, social and territorial cohesion, while contributing to its decarbonisation objective. The trans-European transport networks (TEN-T) represents the main pillar of EU transport infrastructure policy and is designed in three gradually strategic layers to be timely completed: the core by 2030, the extended core by 2040 and the comprehensive networks by 2050. The completion of the core network alone is expected to generate an additional EUR 4 500 billion or 1.8% of Union GDP and account for 13 million job-years until 2030.

However, against those benefits, the TEN-T deployment faces several difficulties that require to be addressed in this revision:

- Capacity bottlenecks, remaining missing links and insufficient network connectivity hampering multimodality;

- Insufficient and incomplete TEN-T infrastructure standards for each mode;

- Lack of alignment with EU decarbonisation objective, paired with an increasing modal-shift and resilience of the infrastructure;

- Operational and administrative barriers, including lengthy cross-border waiting times;

- Inadequate governance instruments and enforcement of the Regulation;

- Delays threatening the timely completion of the core network, causing stranded assets for Member States which managed to build their section and preventing the full network benefits;

PROPOSALS MADE BY THE REPORT

It is against this background that the rapporteurs welcome this revision, which aims to make transport more sustainable, affordable and efficient, to foster multimodality, modal-shift, interoperability and digitalisation while improving its resilience and common governance instruments. Whereas the rapporteurs consider that the efforts should be driven towards those goals, they believe that some provisions need to be strengthened if the Union wants to meet in time its objectives:

- An increased ambition for standards and requirements, with limited exemptions

Standards and requirements for each mode have been strengthened to an extent realistically achievable by Member States and in order to meet Union’s transport objectives, as laid out in the white paper on transport and in the sustainable and smart mobility strategy. Exemptions, on the other hand, have been limited to specific cases, which could lead to misallocation of scarce resources, and to guarantee a coherent and timely deployment of the infrastructure. In this regard, the rapporteurs believe that transport investments should be appreciated not only in terms of costs, but as an economic catalyser enabling long-term growth while contributing to achieve Union’s climate targets.

- Urban nodes

Urban nodes play an important role on the TEN-T as starting or final destination for passengers and freight flows. Provisions have been introduced to ensure that capacity bottlenecks and insufficient connectivity within urban nodes do not hamper multimodality along the TEN-T, while fully taking into account the divers challenges of each urban node and the principle of subsidiarity.

- Smart and innovative infrastructure

Digitalisation is not an end in itself. It makes transport and especially multimodality more accessible, efficient and affordable for citizens and businesses. Moreover, it contributes substantially to improving the safety and sustainability of our transport system while also enabling the responsible authorities to better enforce European common rules.

- Resilience, military mobility and strategic autonomy

TEN-T should be future-proof. Given the new geopolitical context or climate and environmental conditions, provisions have been included to increase the long-term security and resilience of the transport infrastructure. Considerations on the strategic autonomy that represent some critical transport infrastructure have also been introduced.

- Cooperation with third countries

Following the Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, and the position adopted by Belarus in that conflict, cooperation with third countries has been updated to take into account this new geopolitical landscape, by cutting ties with Russia & Belarus and enhancing partnership with Ukraine & Moldova.

- Maintenance

Maintenance is key to ensure high-quality, modern, smart and resilient infrastructure. However, too often maintenance is not properly provided nor included at the earliest stage of a project planning and through its life-time. Provisions on maintenance have been included to address further this issue.

- Reinforced European priorities

One of the main threats of missing the deadline of completion of the core network by 2030 is the misalignment between national transport plans and investments with the European priorities. To address this issue, the rapporteurs strengthen the coherence between those, as well as the conditionality between European funding with European priorities in terms of transport infrastructure deployment.

- Governance

Governance tools have to be reinforced in order to ensure a coherent deployment and timely completion of the TEN-T. To do so, reporting and monitoring instruments have been strengthened, including the role of the European Coordinators and their work plans, as well as provisions to prevent significant delays on the starting or completing work on the networks.

The rapporteurs are convinced that those provisions will greatly contribute to the effective and timely completion of TEN-T networks, in order to build an efficient, sustainable, seamless, high quality and futureproof multimodal transport network across the European Union and its neighbouring countries.