European Court of Auditors (ECA) report titled 'Special Report 10/2020: EU transport infrastructures: more speed needed in megaproject implementation to deliver network effects on time', says that 6 of the 8 multi-billion transport infrastructure projects will not make it to 2030 deadline for the full operation. In other words, they are late.

EU provides the funding. The EU Commission is responsible for ensuring that Member States complete the core transport network by 2030, while Member States bear responsibility for implementing specific projects. And they do not seem to be doing a good job at keeping things at check. Report says, three projects (297 km of line connecting the Basque Y to the French rail network; the A1 motorway in Romania; and the E59 railway in Poland) are very unlikely to make the 2030 deadline. One, the Lyon-Turin link, is unlikely to meet the deadline.

European Union has made available around €7.5 billion in EU funding for these 8 projects and €3.4 billion has already been paid. EU has also withdrawn some of the initially awarded funding due to delays (€1.4 billion for the 17 sections audited). 4 Others (Rail Baltica, the Fehmarn Belt link, the Brenner Base Tunnel and the Canal Seine Nord Europe) are currently likely to be completed ahead of 2030 but here Rail Baltica and Brenner Base Tunnel are marked as good candidates for delays.

ECA report says, in case of failure to complete the network, the EU economy would forfeit potential growth of 1.8 % and 10 million person-years of employment, according to a Commission study. The eight megaprojects examined – four railways (Rail Baltica, Lyon-Turin, Brenner Base Tunnel, Basque Y), one waterway (Seine-Scheldt), one motorway (A1 in Romania) and two multimodal connections (Fehmarn Belt road/ rail link and E59 rail link to ports in Poland) – cost over €1 billion each and are expected to deliver considerable socio-economic benefits.

Full report is available (10 MB pdf):

Italian: https://www.eca.europa.eu/Lists/ECADocuments/SR20_10/SR_Transport_Flagship_Infrastructures_IT.pdf

English: https://www.eca.europa.eu/Lists/ECADocuments/SR20_10/SR_Transport_Flagship_Infrastructures_EN.pdf

Other languages: (look at the bottom of the page): https://www.eca.europa.eu/en/Pages/DocItem.aspx?did=53699

This is what ECA has got to say in summary:

Speed up cross-border megaprojects to optimise transport across Europe, say EU Auditors

Key cross-border transport megaprojects in the EU are progressing more slowly than expected. Six of the eight multibillion infrastructures audited and their access lines are unlikely to be operating at full capacity by 2030 as initially planned, according to a new report by the European Court of Auditors (ECA). This will further postpone the completion of the core trans-European network (TEN-T).

In 2013, the EU Member States agreed to have the core TEN-T network ready by 2030. A key feature of the network is  cross-border transport projects, which aim to improve connections between national networks along European corridors.

The auditors examined whether the construction of large-scale motorways, railways and waterways with cross-border impact on the EU core transport network was well planned and efficiently implemented. They checked eight EU-funded megaprojects worth a total of €54 billion (including €7.5 billion from the EU),  linking transport networks of   13 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Baltics, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania and Spain.

Construction was significantly delayed on all the megaprojects examined (average delay 11 years),  jeopardising the effective functioning of five out of nine multinational corridors. The main reason for these poor results was that projects were often poorly coordinated between countries. Member States have their own investment priorities and planning procedures,  and do not always support cross-border projects or investment in transnational corridors to the same degree. Nor does project implementation always progress at the same speed on each side of the border. So far, the Commission has not made use of the limited legal tools at its disposal to enforce the priorities agreed at EU level in Member States that fail to keep pace.

“Timely establishment of the core TEN-T corridors is critical to the achievement of EU policy goals, supporting growth and jobs and tackling climate change,” said Oskar Herics, the ECA Member responsible for the report. “Additional efforts should bemade to speed up the finalisation of many of the EU’s flagship transport megaprojects. Because these projects are essential to achieve a better connectivity across Europe and to deliver the network effects on time.”

Over time, the costs of the eight megaprojects have increased by more than €17 billion (47 %), often due to changes in project design and scope, as well as due to inefficient implementation. The largest increase was in the Canal Seine Nord Europe project (part of the Seine-Scheldt link), whose costs nearly tripled. In Romania, meanwhile, the auditors observed that one new stretch of the A1 motorway was unused and two sections were wrongly connected. This led to an ineffective use and waste of money.

The auditors also identified weaknesses in Member States’ cost-benefit analyses of these multibillion-euro investments: traffic forecasts were potentiallyoveroptimistic and some projects may not be economically viable. This is particularly true of the Rail Baltica line and the rail section of the Fehmarn Belt fixed link with far too few passengers. The auditors also noted that the Commission did not assess the construction specifications independently based on potential passenger and freight traffic flows before awarding EU funding.

The Commission’s supervision of network completion by the Member States is distant and needs to be strengthened. The Commission has no specific department for providing Member States with expert  support  in  steering such  large  projects,   and lacks  an  overview  of the progress  made. Nevertheless, the Commission recently took a step towards closer, more effective supervision and progress monitoring by defining project deliverables in the “implementing decisions”.  

image: European Union Mobility & Transport website.