Introduction
The main driver of the trans-European networks concept was the development of the Single Market. Good transport, energy and telecommunication connexions across Europe (inside the Union and with its neighbours) would progressively erase the barriers created by national self-containment policies consolidated by the nation-states over the past two centuries. Integration to facilitate commerce across national borders, often a physical but always a technical and bureaucratic impediment to free movement, required removing the infrastructure gaps on international links.
The dilemma of who would do what and when appeared as a Gordian knot that could only be cut at the European level. The sparkling moment to empower the European Commission (EC) to act came when the expansion across central Europe of the high-speed rail (HSR) technology required the compatibility of the systems being developed in France, Germany and Italy, following the Japanese lead. Otherwise, the interoperability problems of the existing rail system would be reproduced but, in this case, for a technology that was supposed to facilitate long-distance travel. In fact, the first implementations (Firenze-Roma; Paris-Lyon; Mannheim-Stuttgart and Hannover-Würzburg; Madrid-Seville) were incompatible, and PBKAL (Paris-Brussels-Cologne, Amsterdam-London), with the Channel Tunnel, required a revamped global approach through a Europe-wide initiative. The EC and UIC (International Rail Union) achieved a consensus on the skeleton of a global network. This was the background for the definition of a trans-European networks (TENs) policy[1], which incorporated higher integration and cohesion objectives.
Objectives and reality
The circumstances surrounding EU transport policy have considerably changed since I wrote my book on trans-European transport networks (TENT)[2]. The most relevant are probably: a) the expansion of the EU; b) the increasing relevance of climate issues and decarbonisation, with their impact on energy supply for transport; c) some profound sociological changes arising mostly from progress in telecommunication, with strong impacts on work and mobility patterns; d) the uneven path to globalisation that has increased trade, but also migration, to unprecedented levels and is being increasingly questioned by a trend towards the reinforcement of national borders; and e) the appearance of conflicts, such as the Ukrainian war, which were unimaginable at the time, reversing some of the guiding principles of the external affairs of the EU. This cumulation of difficulties runs in parallel with an accelerated technological development, the increasing weight of the economic champions and an obsolete political and administrative system that favours bureaucracy and poor decision-making. These circumstances have implications for a common transport policy, the infrastructure supporting it and, in particular, for the basic networks constituting the core TENT and are often used by Member States (MS) as an excuse for relinquishing their commitments. In reality they have not adequately planned and executed integration projects, systematically prioritising components of national relevance. It is not surprising, therefore, that the objectives supporting TENT in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 have scarcely been achieved. After several deadline postponements, the networks, in particular in the key border sections, are far from completion.
Progress since definition of TENT
The basic idea behind TENT was that coordination was necessary for HSR, but also for the other land transport networks. Interest in integration was not always shared, so incentives had to be provided to build certain links, but also for the rapid deployment of standards, such as the ERTMS signalling system or for air traffic control. Financing mechanism (EU grants and EIB loans) aimed to convince national governments to prioritise these investments. The amounts granted and the procedures to allocate them have changed over the years. The creation of an autonomous unit (presently CINEA) to manage the grants has facilitated funding. On the other hand, the support for public-private partnerships (PPPs) and the acceptance of project risks by the EIB, has opened more investment opportunities.
In spite of these incentives, progress towards completing the networks has been slow and lacking coherence and efficiency. The creation of Priority Corridors to replace the poorly defined list of Priority Projects in the first TENs Guidelines was supposed to force MS to focus on EU-relevant projects, but the EC has been accepting modifications of the original concepts, following the desires of specific national governments, that relegate the focus on critical cross-border sections.
The last Guidelines; a critical comment.
The TTEN Guidelines have been updated since 1996 in 2010, 2013 and, recently, in 2024. As with most revised EU policy documents, the last Regulation[3] is not a deep reconsideration to adapt the policy to changing circumstances in the EU and the world, but rather a bureaucratic expansion of the original document to incorporate “new” political “good biases”. The various “agendas” to “save the planet” and to protect certain social minorities are directly or indirectly present. The most striking change is the inclusion of defence considerations. The aim of the following comments is to contribute to the necessary debate on the future of EU transport policy:
A. Goals
The initial goal of TENT was the facilitation of the Internal Market, minimizing logistic costs to have similar prices everywhere. As other obstacles to the free circulation of people and freight have been removed, the remaining barriers are essentially linked to capacity and interoperability. Presently TENT, besides providing sustainable, safe, efficient and resilient infrastructure for a “single European transport area”, incorporate all sorts of objectives, including the promotion of active modes of mobility[4]. The concept of efficiency and service quality is diluted in a massive amount of environmental and social objectives that have their own EU policies. These aspects must logically be considered in the realization of TENT, but should not distract from the main integration objective.
Integration induces market expansion and economies of scale that negatively affect regions with less capacity to compete, in particular peripheral regions. The “interconnection to further economic growth and competitiveness” has an impact on these regions that has not been properly addressed and could reinforce a trend towards a service (often tourism-oriented) economy. Even within regions, the development of nodes and the main links, especially for HSR, tends to reinforce the depopulation of rural areas. This means that the cohesion objective of TENT[5], implies reducing its negative impacts with economic and social measures both at inter- and intra-regional levels. This challenge seems at odds with the concentration of efforts on the Priority Corridors.
The link between transport and energy is obvious. Developing the common market necessarily involves an increase in interurban mobility and thus of energy consumption. As the sector mostly imports it as fossil fuels, which generate CO2, it is bound to electrify and, consequently, reduce pollution in urban areas. However, the policies supporting decarbonisation are hardly consistent. Adequate tariffs placing transport in a correct position with regards other sectors (power generation, industry, heating, etc.) would probably have stronger sustainability and efficiency impacts than many TENT infrastructure investments. On the other hand, making recharging infrastructure available in TEN roads is essential for the transition to electric vehicles.
The overall future performance of the system in terms of congestion, pollution, safety and efficiency depends very much on its capacity to develop and absorb innovation. Automation (self-driving) and drones will have consequences on the type of services offered and on the capacity and safety of infrastructures. The Guidelines are insufficiently attentive to this unavoidable transition and remain attached to obsolete visions. The proposal to increase by 50% the market share for rail by 2030 is illusory. The required resources in money and time to provide the supply conditions for a doubtful demand are unattainable by the deadline.
Transport is necessarily framed by the public sector, as its infrastructures require land and important resources that can only be obtained with the collaboration of the relevant administrations. This makes it particularly vulnerable to politics and to lobbies. In fact, relatively small groups, such as rail workers, have the potential to block any development that they could consider harmful to them. Indeed, vested interests explain the persistence of historical debates, such as harmonisation vs. liberalisation, and the EC bias in favour of rail. The status-quo is protected by overregulation, which hinders innovation and progress.
B. Extension and ambition
TENs were accepted by MS under the principle of subsidiarity. Their development required a higher view from the Commission and financial support from the EU budget. The current Priority Corridors are almost sub-networks which, together, practically conform the core network. This expansion has an operational logic, as transport reality is diffuse, but it has incorporated as priorities many links that are essentially of national interest. On the other hand, the complete network is little more than the dissemination of these corridors over national spaces and has little subsidiarity justification[6]. The whole TENT is mostly justified, but available EU support should focus on critical international connections, such as cross-border links.
The new objective related to defence (dual-use infrastructure), hardly conceivable a decade ago, requires a much deeper analysis of threats and potential responses. It may probably justify the creation/improvement of some new links, notably with neighbouring countries, but should not be an excuse for EU support to “national” projects.
More subtly, the new Guidelines pretend to extend EC power to the local level. Whilst urban nodes have logically been part of TENT links, the new Guidelines pretend to intervene more thoroughly inside cities. This seem presumptuous when the success of the EU in the implementation of TENT at the interurban level has been so mediocre. In sum, the reality indicates that TENT policy has been overambitious and should be redesigned to focus on facilitating the main flows among MS.
C. High-speed and conventional
The TENT were a response to the need to ensure that HSR developed with a European perspective, avoiding past mistakes in standards. The creation of the “new” network pulling to the limit the existing technology instead of opting for more innovative solutions, such as maglev, was justified because it could extend services through conventional lines when the construction of ad-hoc infrastructure was not justified. But this has delayed its expansion[7] while the uncritical support of the EU has contributed to political decisions to build lines that can be labelled as “white elephants”[8]. Most HSR lines in Spain, designed to enhance the capital role of Madrid, or the Rail Baltica project, with severe problems in its implementation, are examples of enormous investments that will generate maintenance and operation costs higher than revenues. Debt from the investment and chronic deficits will be a heavy legacy for the future generations. The development of the HSR network must be based on sufficient potential demand; when it is insufficient to cover costs, a precise estimation of the cohesion and integration benefits should be compared with the unrecoverable costs to justify the investment and the eventual EU support.
In spite of EU backing, the share of rail transport in goods transport has been decreasing whilst road transport has grown. The reasons are multiple and mostly irreversible: the reduction of shipment sizes, linked to the closure of heavy industries and to e-commerce, the dependence on road transport for collection and distribution and, more critically, the inefficiency of the rail system due to its technical restrictions and the dominance of public sector companies in infrastructure management and operation. Public support is essentially linked to this dominance. The argument of energy efficiency and reduced emissions is increasingly questionable. The main beneficiaries of subsidized rail freight are big companies with the capacity of filling trains and major logistic operators with maritime and terrestrial platforms. Whilst providing rail services to major freight flows is still necessary, the justification for public grants for new infrastructure and operation subsidies should be much thorough analysed than today. In any case, the vision of creating a highly competitive freight rail network across the Union seems an illusion.
D. Roads
Roads are the universal mode of transport: they provide global spatial accessibility and are thus the necessary complement to the other modes. Proper road links to the nodes of the other transport networks are essential for their performance but also to attain the cohesion objectives of TENT. Road transport is the target of criticisms, notably for its environmental impact. However, its replacement by rail for goods transport is pure wishful thinking[9] and the innovations that are already being adopted, with megatrucks, electric vehicles and automation will increase the supremacy of lorries in freight transport. The Common Market will only prosper if the basic road TEN is given the required attention, with adapted infrastructure, electrification and ad-hoc services and regulations. It is possible that the existing road infrastructure be sufficient if its capacity is increased following the innovations in automatic driving. To adapt the TEN road system to the new paradigm will require heavy investments, at least in the basic network. They could mostly be covered by the users without public support, but the EU should establish a clear general payment system with harmonised tolls and energy taxes. Whilst grants for new cross-border links and new roads in less developed regions may be eligible for grants, the focus of the road TEN should be in accelerating efficiency and sustainability through innovation and in designing a common financing mechanism that is simple and fair.
E. Multimodal
The concept of modal integration is essential to attain the stated goals of efficiency, sustainability and cohesion. The TENT Incorporate this concept, but are, in practice, a set of modal networks. Intermodal terminals are the key element for the integration. They are critical for maritime and inland ports, airports, and rail freight terminals and passenger stations. Ports and airports have not been very relevant in TENT, essentially because they are commercial endeavours and EU support could be seen as distorting competition. The definition of their networks appeared late and based on criteria, such as total traffic, that are not really meaningful for the objectives of TENT. Most support has therefore gone into investments essentially related to collateral policies: multimodal transport, air traffic control, energy transition, etc. This is likely to continue in the future, but some clear criteria are needed regarding how resilience, electrification, pollution, etc. should be treated to avoid disrupting competition.
Terminals are essential for the reliability of the logistic chains and the integration of inland waterway and short-sea shipping, but they are technically, bureaucratically and even politically the more complex infrastructures to build. Rail freight terminals, which generally perform quite poorly, are systematically supported by TENT funds that are not available for the necessary connecting roads. Besides, all terminals involve vital private sector interests, so EU funding criteria should be reviewed to clarify requirements in terms of efficiency and market neutrality.
As mentioned, the new Guidelines are extending the scope of TENT to local nodes. Urban terminals are necessary, but such projects usually involve expenses unrelated to interurban transport. When the influence of EU grants to develop TENT has been so modest, it does not seem logical to expand its influence to projects that, according to the subsidiarity principle, should be the responsibility of local authorities[10].
F. Financing
In theory, MS should be ready to finance all eligible projects showing adequate EU-wide socio-economic profitability. Network components that are insufficiently interesting for national governments because, for instance, many benefits would fall on non-nationals, could reach the right financial profitability with support from the EU. The Connecting Europe Facility provides grants to cover this gap, which must be estimated through a deep analysis of costs and benefits and their distribution to ensure that the “European benefits” are sufficient[11].
The experience of CINEA in grant selection, while not very encouraging[12], is essential to filter unsubstantiated requests and ensure the life-time efficiency and “common interest” of projects, and minimize the risk of financing “white elephants”[13], with strong negative intergenerational effects. In this sense, recent proposals to redirect a large part of the EU funding towards national plans would, in practice, be the end of the common infrastructure policy behind TENT.
Conclusion
TENT are necessary to ensure the social and economic integration of EU countries. The new Guidelines, defining extensive networks with mostly national interest and proposing expansion to urban actions, clearly unaligned with the subsidiarity principle, diffuse the focus on of the basic links facilitating international connections. They are also heavily biased against road transport and aviation, with a poor view of the impact of innovation on performance and sustainability. The policy is also burdened by bureaucracy and the increasing weight of national interests in the EU. A clarification of the TENT objectives (including their importance for defence and innovation), a clear definition of the European value, which should be incorporated into the cost-benefit analysis, and a substantial increase in the budget, keeping it fully independent of the short-term interests of MS, are requisites, from my point of view, to ensure the role of TENT in long-term integration of Europe.
[1] Two French engineers were at the helm of the initiative, Mr Daniel Vincent, director at the EC, and Mr Michel Walrave, general director of the UIC. With a team of experts, in which I had the honour of participating, many of the controversial issues, including the opposition of some national governments to the basic concept of HSR, it was possible to define the first TEN.
[2] Turró, Mateu “Going trans-European. Planning and financing transport networks for Europe”. This was the first book on the subject by a single author and with a comprehensive view of the issues involved. Besides the interest as a background, I believe that many of the ideas developed in the book are still valid, as I will try to explain.
[3] Regulation (EU) 2024/1679 of 13 June 2024
[4] Long-distance cycle routes are mentioned in the Guidelines. It is a comic reflection of the absurdity of the inclusion of “nice” objectives everywhere.
[5] TENT should generate a “better connectivity of the outermost regions and other remote, rural, insular, peripheral and mountainous regions as well as sparsely populated areas”.
[6] It was essentially born to justify EU grants to projects of national interest. Its origin in the pressure of Spain to establish a conventional rail network, when it has a different rail gauge, clearly explains this.
[7] The slow progress of the common signaling system (ERTMS) that should also be used in the connected links, is just one of the examples.
[8] Turró, M & Penyalver, D. “Hunting White elephants on the road. A practical procedure to detect harmful projects of transport infrastructure”, Research in Transport Economics, March 2019.
[9] The target of the EU to shift 30% of road freight traffic over 300 kilometers, for instance, is impossible to achieve. As mentioned, the investment and O&M costs involved are not assumable and the present management system, if maintained, would be unable to handle it. The trend towards irrelevance will continue.
[10] The inclusion of ‘multimodal passenger hubs’ that could be for local transport, including park-and-rides, and infrastructure for active modes shows the aspirations of the Guidelines
[11] EU facilities are mostly considered by MS a bureaucratic hurdle to “recover” the money given to the common pot, explaining the uneven quality of CEF applications. It is actually surprising that some promoters expect to obtain huge amounts of free money with very poor analysis of the interest of the project. The only explanation is that political aspects play such an important role in the decision that the application is mostly seen as a bureaucratic (and rather useless) requirement.
[12] The applications to CEF are evaluated by CINEA to select the best projects. Grants are responsive to requests, so they can hardly be a good selection to achieve the completion of the networks in the defined horizons.
[13] Turró, M & Penyalver, D. “Hunting White elephants on the road. A practical procedure to detect harmful projects of transport infrastructure”, Research in Transport Economics, March 2019.