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(BRUSSELS) – The EU Commission is proposing investment of EUR 421 million in projects promoting digitalisation and fostering intelligent, safe and sustainable finance transport infrastructure projects in Europe.
“These projects, on strategic sections of Europe’s transport network, will help the transition towards safe, smart, inclusive and sustainable mobility,” said Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc, who expects the projects to trigger EUR 1.3 billion in total investment in the EU economy.
The largest part of the funding will be devoted to supporting multimodal logistics platforms (109 million), which make it possible to shift freight between different transport modes. Intelligent Transport Systems for road (ITS) (80.2 million) and innovation and new technologies (71.4 million) closely follow, further demonstrating the EU’s dedication to reducing congestion and emissions whilst at the same time increasing safety.
Selected projects include, among others:
- A new multimodal, integrated and mobile ticketing platform for the Lisbon metropolitan area
- A new rail wagon design facilitating the switch between the track gauges used in Spain and elsewhere in Europe.
- A platform for testing and implementing intelligent transport services across the EU, which brings together 18 Member States, contributing to C-Roads.
These 69 projects will be supported via the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), the EU’s financial mechanism supporting infrastructure development and upgrade. The EU’s financial contribution is made in the form of grants, with different co-financing rates depending on the project type.
Under the CEF programme, 23.6 billion is available for grants from the EU’s 2014-2020 budget to co-fund TEN-T projects in the EU Member States. Since the launch of CEF in 2014, five calls for project proposals have been launched yearly. In total, CEF has so far supported 688 projects with a total of 22.9 billion.
The Commission now has to adopt a formal decision, after which INEA will prepare and sign grant agreements with the beneficiaries of the individual projects by June 2019.
Proposal for the selection of projects
Country factsheets on the 2018 CEF Transport call:
