EU urges action on European transport network

The cost of linking up Europe's transport network has risen 16.8 percent from original projections to nearly 400 billion euros ($618 billion), and big sections are behind schedule, an EU report said.

Integrating trans-European roads and railways is seen as vital to the growth of the internal market within the 27-member bloc, as well as to boosting employment and economic output.

"It is very clear today that significant parts of the 30 priority projects will not be completed until 2015 or even 2020," said the EU Commission report into the progress of 30 road, rail and waterway projects since 2004.

But several key sections have been completed, such as the Oresund link between Sweden and Denmark and the Madrid-Barcelona high-speed rail link, said the document, which was presented to a meeting of transport ministers in Slovenia.

"The efforts will need to be sustained and even further increased for several priority projects after 2013, as the completion dates for some of the major projects have fallen behind the original timetables," said the report.

EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot said the slippage was unacceptable, given that switching passengers and freight from roads to the more efficient railways could help the EU meet its targets of curbing carbon dioxide emissions, key to its strategy for fighting against climate change.

"This fall of investments in Europe is not a good sign," he said. "In the 1980s, we had transport and infrastructure investments in Europe of 1.5 percent of GDP (gross domestic product), and we have fallen to 0.5 percent, on average."

Barrot told reporters EU funding would focus on easing bottlenecks, such as at borders and on routes through the Alps and Pyrenees mountains, and forming high-volume rail corridors. "If you don't have true corridors, you'll have trouble making the shift from road to rail," he said.

Member states last year requested 11.5 billion euros of EU funding to help with 55 billion euros worth of priority projects, exceeding the bloc's budget of 5.1 billion euros.

A rail axis between Berlin and Palermo, in southern Italy, was the largest recipient of the 5.1 billion euros of EU funding, followed by a rail line between Lyon, France, and the Hungarian border with Ukraine.