EN Official Journal of the European Union CE 78/796

(2004/C 78 E/0846)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-3254/03

by José Ribeiro e Castro (UEN) to the Commission

(3 November 2003)

Subject: List of priority projects — European Commission

According to media reports, the Commission submitted to the European Council meeting in Brussels a list of 13 projects considered to be a priority for the European Union and forming part of a wider set of 29 projects entailing a total investment of EUR 220 billion. According to the same source, these will have a 0,6 % impact on the growth of the EU's gross domestic product and will enable 400 000 jobs to be created each year.

The list does not include high-speed rail (TGV) links for the Iberian peninsula. This would have merited criticism from the states concerned which, as peripheral countries, fear that they will benefit only indirectly from the planned investments.

Given the above, will the Commission answer the following:

— can it confirm that it submitted this list of priorities to the European Council;

— can it confirm that the list does not include TGV links for the Iberian peninsula;

— how can it justify this decision, particularly in terms of the principles of economic and social cohesion, equal treatment and the completion of the internal market;

— what measures has it taken or does it intend to take to ensure that geographically remote Member States do not benefit in a merely indirect manner from the planned investments;

Answer given by Mrs de Palacio on behalf of the Commission

(8 December 2003)

The Commission presented its supplementary proposal for revision of the Community guidelines for the development of the trans-European transport network (1) on 1 October 2003. The proposal includes new priority projects which have been added to the 14 adopted on the Essen list in 1994 and the projects proposed by the Commission in 2001 which have been endorsed by Parliament. The projects were selected on the basis of strict criteria which were included in the text of the proposal. The list of projects which the Commission regards as priorities consists in all of 26 projects which are due to be completed by 2020, representing an investment of EUR 220 billion.

Proposals for the Iberian high-speed rail links are included among the priority projects. The Lisbon/Porto-Madrid high-speed line is proposed as an extension to priority project 3 (south-west European high-speed rail link), which since 1994 has included the Madrid-Barcelona-Montpellier and Madrid-Vitoria-Dax links. This project has also been extended northwards in the form of the Montpellier-Nîmes and Dax-Bordeaux-Tours sections. Furthermore, the entire Iberian peninsula high-speed rail network (project 19), including the Vigo-Porto link, has been proposed as a priority project since 2001.

The projects regarded as priorities also include the Sines-Madrid-Paris rail freight link (project 16), which includes the Sines-Badajoz railway line and the Pyrenees rail crossing. All of these rail projects help to interconnect Portugal and Spain and to link them to the rest of the trans-European network.

The Iberian peninsula will also be able to benefit from the potential of the ‘motorways of the sea’, which are also included as a priority project (project 21) in the Commission's proposal of 1 October 2003.

In addition, in the framework of the European growth initiative launched by Mr Prodi, the European Council of 16 and 17 October 2003 invited ‘the Commission, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the relevant formations of the Council to establish, without prejudice to the priorities identified in the Commission proposal, a “quick-start programme” identifying a list of projects in an enlarged Union’. The ‘quick-start programme’, adopted by the Commission on 11 November 2003 (2), does not call into question the priorities which the Commission has already defined, which must be adopted by Parliament and the Council by co-decision procedure, but is rather an initiative to give a quicker start to a number of advanced cross-border links to act as a fulcrum for all of these projects, all of which retain priority status. The projects included in this programme include the Lisbon-Madrid, Vigo-Porto and Perpignan-Figueras high-speed train links and the motorways of the sea. The Commission will present its proposal for the ‘quick-start programme’ in its report to the European Council in December 2003 on the European growth initiative.

(1) COM(2003) 564 final.

(2) COM(2003) 690 final.