Auditors call for end to EU transport financing programme

Marco Polo scheme should be scrapped, ECA says.

The European Union’s Marco Polo programmes, which aim to shift freight from road to rail, should be scrapped, according to a  report by the European Court of Auditors. 

“The programmes were ineffective as they did not meet the targets, little impact was achieved in shifting freight off the roads and there were no data to assess…environmental benefits,” Ville Itälä, the auditor responsible for the report, said on Monday (15 July).

Since 2003, the Marco Polo I and II programmes have financed projects that prioritise rail, but the audit found that not enough relevant proposals were put forward because the rules were too cumbersome. Half of the projects that did receive funding had little environmental benefit, the auditors found. Managers of 13 of the 16 projects that were audited said they would have gone ahead without EU funding.

The programme should be scrapped or redesigned, the report said, and its successor should require impact assessments to be carried out from the start of a project, showing the potential benefits to the EU.

The European Commission said that it accepted the report’s findings, and that it had already taken steps to change the way that it funds transport schemes. “This confirms our approach to end Marco Polo as it exists now,” said a spokesperson for Siim Kallas, the European commissioner for transport. “For the future, as there is a political need for support of innovative freight transport solutions, there will be carefully framed support possibilities under the future TEN-T programme [the EU’s planned unified transport network], with annual calls for instance.”

Bad investments

In a separate report, the ECA found that there were huge variations in costs for road projects financed through the European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund over the past three years.

The ECA looked at 24 road-investment projects, in Germany, Greece, Poland and Spain. In one scheme in Germany, it cost €287,000 to provide 1,000 square metres of road surface, while a scheme in Spain cost €496,000 to cover the same area. The difference cannot be explained by labour costs, the ECA said.

The auditors also said that predictions of the amount of traffic expected to use EU- financed road projects were often inaccurate. The report said that the type of road chosen was often not suited to the smaller amount of traffic, and 14 out of 19 projects that were audited were used by fewer vehicles than expected.

“Bigger is not always better,” said Harald Wögerbauer, the auditor responsible for the report. “Motorways should only be financed with EU money where there is a clear traffic need.”

The auditors recommended that financing be given only where there are clear objectives for improvements in travel time, capacity and economic effects. Payments should be dependent on using cost-effective road building technologies, the report said.

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