ECSA joins fight to save EU infrastructure funding
European shipowners’ organisation ECSA has joined other leading transport bodies in calling on EU transport ministers to prevent planned EU transport infrastructure spending being eroded by the EUR315 billion (USD333 billion) strategic investment fund championed by EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker
The new grouping, which comprises 14 bodies representing the ports, rail, inland waterways industries and shippers, has urged transport ministers to address the issue when they meet in Brussels on Friday.
ECSA and the other members of the grouping have backed the stand taken at the start of February by ports body ESPO, which warned that a guarantee fund to be set up under the Juncker plan would take EUR8 billion out of the EU budget, including EUR2.7 billion from the transport infrastructure allocation of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF).
In addition, ESPO said, the Juncker plan provided for transport infrastructure projects to be financed even when they did not comply with the strategic objectives set out by the CEF and the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T).
The new alliance ESPO has now set up with ECSA, and other EU transport bodies claimed today that the Juncker plan would involve the reallocation of a “huge” 18\% of the CEF transport grants budget in leading EU member countries.
It called on transport ministers to explore ways of avoiding cuts in the CEF budget and to find alternative ways of financing the credit guarantee fund of the Juncker plan, officially referred to as the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI).
ECSA