Skip to main content

EU investment fund ‘important for transport’

The new EU Commissioner for Transport, Violeta Bulc, said that the US$392 billion investment fund unveiled by President Juncker last week will have big significance for the transport sector. In a speech today to the Committee on Transport and Tourism at the European Parliament, Ms Bulc said that the new European Fund for Strategic Investment set up with the European Investment Bank (EIB) offers new opportunities to finance transport needs, particularly in urban mobility. “Investment needs in urban mob
December 19, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
The new EU Commissioner for Transport, Violeta Bulc, said that the US$392 billion investment fund unveiled by President Juncker last week will have big significance for the transport sector.

In a speech today to the Committee on Transport and Tourism at the European Parliament, Ms Bulc said that the new European Fund for Strategic Investment set up with the 4270 European Investment Bank (EIB) offers new opportunities to finance transport needs, particularly in urban mobility.

“Investment needs in urban mobility are massive since they are generating most of the traffic and most of the emissions,” she told the Committee. “The infrastructure and the fleets for new collective transport systems, to make our cities smarter, need to be put in place.”

Ms Bulc said that more investment was needed for cleaner modes of transport, particularly at borders, to have a unified and more efficient European transport system and to bring it into the 21st century.

She said: “Intelligent Transport Systems should be deployed at European level to make the best use of the existing and future infrastructure and to develop a transport system which is at the service of the users— citizens and companies.”

The new fund, Ms Bulc emphasised, will complement and not substitute financial instruments already in place, such as the Connecting Europe Facility, the Cohesion and EIB loans. It will also target more ‘risky’ transport projects not currently funded by the EIB.

Related Content

  • CBI calls for new approach to road funding
    October 11, 2012
    The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) calls for road charging should be introduced on the strategic road network in England. Proposals in the report, Bold Thinking: A model to fund our future roads also suggest that responsibility for the network’s budget should be taken away from the Department for Transport (DfT) and given to an independent regulator. Launching the report, CBI director-general John Cridland said a regulatory asset base (RAB) model was required to address the problem of long-term fu
  • EU having ‘intense’ discussions over ‘low-carbon mobility’ goals
    June 3, 2016
    According to Maroš Šefčovič, the Commission vice-president for the Energy Union, the European Commission is having “very intense discussions” with member states over the individual emissions reduction percentage that they will be assigned to reduce emissions in sectors not covered by the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), says Euractiv. Šefčovič devoted substantial attention to the situation in the non-ETS sector and to the issue of ‘low-carbon mobility’, or reducing emissions from transport. The non-ETS se
  • Leading Finland’s transport revolution
    July 18, 2017
    Anne Berner, Finland’s minister of transport and communications, does not fit the normal political mould. She is not a career politician but a business executive who became a member of parliament in 2015 and has said from the outset that she will only serve one term. Without concerns about being re-elected and a clear view of the future of transport, Berner can concentrate on what needs to be done - tackling some of the more contentious and intransigent subjects. Her name is best known for two major initiat
  • Sustainable mobility in Europe 'needs €1.5 trillion' by 2050
    October 4, 2024
    EIT Urban Mobility report says money is required for continent to reach Green Deal goals