Conciliation deal on TENs funding

Date: 20/06/1996

EU FUNDING of over 1.5 billion ecu for the Union's key infrastructure projects looks set to be unfrozen after MEPs and member states reached a last-minute conciliation deal on the guidelines for the Trans-European Networks.

Just two days before the 19 June deadline, the two sides agreed on a compromise after five hours of talks on the sidelines of this week's meeting of EU transport ministers.

Negotiations focused on the European Parliament's demand for a legally-binding annex listing priority projects and committing member states to bringing them to fruition within a set time-scale.

When talks wound up at 11.30pm on Monday night (17 June), the final agreement included only an 'indicative' Annex III listing the 14 priority projects identified at the Essen summit in December 1994.

The guidelines will also now include an article stressing the EU's commitment to giving particular attention to combined transport and advanced traffic management projects.

But Council officials maintained that under the deal, the Parliament would have no power of veto over which projects member states decide to give priority to.

“The TENs are national decisions, so this really was as far as we could go,” said an official.

Member state officxials believe that the main priority for MEPs was to “associate themselves with the political undertakings made at Essen” and for the priority projects to “in some way fall under the co-decision procedure”.

Officials admitted that the Parliament influenced the final form of the TENs network in a number of ways, but insisted that the inclusion of the new indicative annex would not allow it any influence over financing for the projects, nor would it permit MEPs to put new projects on the agenda.

But German MEP Wilhelm Piecyk warned “the European Parliament's budget committee will follow developments closely so that we can ensure that these projects are realised according to Parliament's wishes”.

MEPs were more successful in their demands for tighter environmental assessments to be built into the guidelines.

Several compromises were tabled during the course of the conciliation process, but in the end Council agreed that a new article specifically dedicated to the environment should be included.

While member states will maintain control over environmental impact assessments on a national basis, the major change is that the Commission is now committed to “develop appropriate methods of analysis for strategically evaluating the environmental impact of the whole network”.

The Commission will present its ideas on so-called 'corridor analyses' when it brings forward the review of the TENs guidelines it is already committed to producing.

While new assessments of projects already well-advanced will naturally be difficult, MEPs believe the agreement should at least ensure that 'green' concerns are given wider consideration when adding to or completing the network.

Up until the last minute, most member states had insisted that environmental studies should be carried out under existing legal provisions.

The deal struck in Luxembourg now has to be ratified by both institutions within six weeks. The final drafting of the text is likely to be a time-consuming business, but Piecyk is optimistic of gaining the full Parliament's support at its plenary session at the end of July.

A Council official predicted that it would not be too difficult to get agreement from ministers.

Failure to settle the dispute by this week's deadline would have been highly embarrassing for the Commission, which has set much store by the TENs as part of its job-creation drive.

Once the deal is rubber-stamped, it will free up 280 million ecu in EU funding for 1996 and 1.278 billion for the rest of the century.