| Summary |
The objective of this task is to assess the contribution of the Cohesion Fund and ISPA during the period 2000-2006 to the development of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) and the pan-European Transport Corridors, in terms of network completion. The evaluation covers 16 countries in total, including the 10 former ISPA beneficiaries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia), the original Cohesion Fund 4 (Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece), plus Cyprus and Malta. The main remit of this evaluation is to determine the role of the ISPA/Cohesion Fund interventions in terms of TEN-T network completion. From the information available, it is possible to make a quantitative assessment of the contribution of the ISPA/Cohesion Fund road and rail projects towards the TEN-T network within the EU-16 Member States, between 2000 and 2006. In the road sector, the 99 approved road projects provided 4,214 km of new or rehabilitated road on the TEN-T network, contributing approximately 10% towards its total length. This contribution was greatest for the EU-10 Member States, in which the 57 projects contributed approximately 20% towards the TEN-T network. For rail, the 112 approved projects provided 8,477km of new or rehabilitated track/infrastructure on the TEN-T network, or approximately 21% of its total length across these countries. Again, the greatest contribution was to the TEN-T networks within the EU-10 countries, in which the Cohesion Fund and ISPA projects improved almost 40% (over 6,000km). The contribution of the ISPA/Cohesion Fund co-financed road projects to the TEN-T network across the EU-16 countries was approximately 10% (4,214 km). The rail projects contributed approximately 21% (8,477km) to the combined TEN-T rail network of Member States. The contribution of the two instruments towards the development of the TEN-T network during the 2000 to 2006 period is therefore viewed as being significant, and in the case of the EU-10, exceptional. This is because the EU-10 acceded halfway through the 2000-2006 programming period and faced the biggest challenge in terms of bringing their national infrastructure up to a basic standard, comparable with other Member States. Building upon the analysis of the project data, this evaluation also explores the broader contribution of ISPA and the Cohesion Fund interventions towards the TEN-T within the EU-16 Member States, by examining some of the wider policy issues arising from investment in transport during the 2000 to 2006 period. The relevant policy areas (including economic development, urban transport, sustainability and finance), have been distilled into six key questions which this report has sought to answer. |
