EC to invest €78.9m into port development

The figures are part of a bid to invest €1bn in 39 transport projects, which is anticipated to make available €4.5bn of public and private co-financing by 2030.

Projects that will benefit from the proposed funding include Poland’s Port of Gdańsk, which will have its capacity improved, and Belgium’s Albert Canal, which will be adapted for bigger freight transport.

The finance bid must now be approved by EU member states represented in the Connecting Europe Facility Coordination Committee at their meeting on December 12, with adoption of the formal EC Decision to follow.

“Our investment plan for Europe is working: today we are proposing to invest €1bn in 39 transport projects of clear EU added value for citizens and businesses,” said Violeta Bulc, European Commissioner for Transport.

“This will allow us to further accelerate our transition to low-emission mobility across Europe, and firmly deliver on the EU’s agenda for jobs and growth.”

The CEF is an EU fund supporting infrastructure networks and combines EU grants with funding from the European Investment Bank, National Promotional Banks and private banks.

If the EC’s proposal is given the green light, the organisation’s Innovation and Networks Executive Agency will prepare and sign grant agreements with the individual project beneficiaries in the first quarter of next year.

All proposed projects receiving finance – which will take the form of grants, with different co-financing rates depending on the type of project – were selected through the 2017 CEF Transport Blending MAP Call for Proposals, open to all EU member states.

Under the CEF programme, €23.4bn is set aside for grants from the EU’s 2014-2020 budget to co-fund Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T) projects – with TEN-T being a planned set of transport networks in the EU – in the EU member states.

So far, including the above €1bn announcement – which was made at the end of November – 641 projects receive CEF co-funding for €22.3bn in total, meaning that 96% of the CEF grant envelope has been allocated.