MEPs vote to release TENs projects cash

Date: 18/07/1996

By Michael Mann

DESPITE threatening to derail the process, MEPs have finally cleared the way for the release of EU funding for the Commission's treasured transport infrastructure projects.

The full Parliament voted yesterday

(17 July) to approve the conciliation agreement hammered out over eight weeks in May and June, freeing up 280 million ecu for the Trans-European Networks (TENs) this year and a further 1.278 billion ecu up to the turn of the century.

But MEPs forced the Commission to sweat right up to the last moment before approving the funding.

Voicing anger that Portugal was to change one of its priority projects without consulting Parliament, MEPs had threatened to vote down the compromise agreed with member states. This would have meant beginning the entire process of clearing the TENs guidelines all over again, and the relief in the Commission after the vote was palpable.

Anger in the Parliament erupted after the Florence summit, where heads of government “took note” of Portugal's intention to change the Lisbon to Valladolid motorway into a 'multi-modal' transport project.

With multi-modal transport one of the great buzz-words in the transport sector, and a favoured option of both

the Commission and Parliament alike, no one opposed the idea in principle. But MEPs, led by rapporteur Wilhelm Piecyk, claimed that amending one of the priority projects without consulting the Parliament made a mockery of the co-decision powers they felt they had gained over setting the TENs' priorities.

They were only won over when Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock - aware that the timing of the change was not very politic - found a form of words which satisfied the Parliament that its right of co-decision had not been compromised by the planned changes.

Thus reassured, MEPs felt able to vote in favour of the deal.

Member state officials stressed that whatever Kinnock pledged would make little difference in practical terms to the final shape of the Iberian TENs project.

Although the conciliation agreement saw the inclusion in the TENs guidelines of an additional annex specifying the priority projects, member states believe this merely gives Parliament a nominal say in their selection and insist final decisions remain a matter of national competence.

Commission officials admitted that the shape of the project was largely a matter for the Portuguese government in association with the Spanish administration and its other EU partners. They said that as EU funding goes principally towards financing feasibility studies, the amount of money made available for the project was unlikely to change.

During a lengthy debate on the eve of yesterday's vote, a number of MEPs expressed concern that the improved environmental standards for which they had fought so hard still did not go far enough.

British Socialist Anita Pollack stressed it would be up to the MEPs to ensure there was no backtracking on the new environmental article in the guidelines.

The guidelines are now due to be adopted by the Council without further ministerial debate.