A new report by the European Union's financial watchdog in Luxembourg has revealed shortcomings in the implementation of major transport projects. Can the EU rev up and steer its megaprojects over the finish line?

The European Union's vision to create a seamless, sustainable and high-quality multimodal transport network across Europe by 2050 was recently thwarted - by an EU watchdog who warned that delays of major projects are putting key 2030 and 2040 milestones at risk.

From the Lyon-Turin rail link to the Canal Seine-Nord waterway, an EU goal to complete a group of cross-border links by 2030 'will not be met', according to a January report by the European Court of Auditors (ECA).

'Three decades after most of them were designed, we are still a long way from cutting the ribbon on these projects, and a long way from achieving the intended improvements in passenger and freight flows across Europe,' said the ECA member Annemie Turtelboom.

The ECA audited eight projects forming the backbone of EU plans to boost road, rail, water, and air transport across the 27-nation bloc in a bid to spur trade and economic growth.

TEN-T going downhill

The Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) is the backbone of Europe's transport network and includes numerous large-scale transnational projects that are essential to improving connectivity across Europe.

In 2013, EU member states agreed to complete the TEN-T core network by 2030, but the Court of Auditors, updating its view from five years ago, considered that 'the outlook in 2025 is worse than it was in 2020, and is very far from what was initially envisaged'.

In 2020, EU auditors reported that the eight megaprojects examined had experienced an overall 47 percent increase in actual costs (adjusted for inflation) compared with the original estimates.

Touching 13 countries including Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, France and Italy - the projects have received 15.3 billion Euro in EU funding and accumulated on average a 17-year delay, the auditors found.

According to the ECA report, the delays were down to a series of challenges, such as unexpected technical issues as well as the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's war on Ukraine.

Mounting costs add pressure

According to the new report, costs have ballooned further than expected.

Not considering inflation, the overall price tag for the projects analysed was up 82 percent on the original estimates, the report said.

The most recent calculations for the projects are now almost twice the original levels, with the sharp rise attributed to two rail links - the Rail Baltica linking Tallinn and Warsaw via Riga and Kaunas, where costs have risen by 291 percent, and the link between Lyon in southern France and Turin in northern Italy, where the rise has been of 127 percent.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - which broke free from the Soviet Union when it crumbled in 1990-1991 and went on to join both the EU and NATO in 2004 - all have Soviet-era wide gauge railways.

With a total population of just six million people, the Baltic trio inked a deal in 2017 to build a high-speed rail link, aimed at creating fresh opportunities for the region in terms of trade and logistics.

In addition to rising costs, the construction of the Lyon-Turn railway has, over the years, also faced opposition from environmental groups critical of the Lyon-Turin tunnel project. Supporters said it will greatly ease freight road traffic but opponents - who staged, for example, a protest close to the village of Saint Remy-de-Maurienne in southeastern France in 2017 - said the ecological damage risks being devastating and that springs had already started to dry up due to the works.

The Brenner Base Tunnel connecting Innsbruck (Austria) and northern Italy - which aims primarily to shift freight from road to rail - will now cost 40 percent more than originally estimated and is currently estimated to open in 2032 at the earliest. The original opening date was 2016, and the ECA had already moved its estimation to 2028 in its report five years ago.

Costs for the Fehmarn Belt road/rail link between Denmark and Germany will be 52 percent higher, with opening planned for 2029, 11 years later than originally planned, with the possibility of further delay until 2031.

The Seine-Nord Europe Canal, a high-capacity waterway intended to facilitate the transport of goods between the Benelux countries and the Paris region also suffered from massive overruns, up 225 percent.

'The Basque Y railway line, which was supposed to be operational by 2010 according to its initial timeline and by 2023 according to the revised plan from 2020, is now expected to be ready by 2030 at the very earliest,' the report said, although the auditors consider 2035 to be more realistic.

According to data from the European Commission, Spain was one of the countries investing the most in high-speed rail, with an average of around 1.5 billion Euro per year between 2018 and 2022. However, the aftermath of three fatal train crashes earlier this month exposed the inadequate maintenance of existing railway networks.

Despite the critical issues that have emerged across the eight megaprojects, according to the report, the European Commission has never used the legal instruments at its disposal to obtain clarification on the delays from the capitals.

Moving forward, the auditors expressed the hope that national transport plans will in future be coordinated with priorities at European level. Member states are now obliged to do so, but this will show up only in new megaprojects.

Two projects beat the odds

On a more positive note, in the case of two projects, the A1 motorway in Romania and the E59 railway line in Poland, the latest cost estimates are actually lower than the original ones.

According to the ECA report, costs for the E59 line were down 18 percent and auditors did not provide an estimated year of opening.

Poland's TEN-T network already covers the seaports of Gdansk, Gdynia, Szczecin and Swinoujscie, as well as airports including Warsaw, Kraków, Gdansk and Katowice, which serve as key multimodal nodes. The E59 railway is part of the Baltic Sea - Adriatic Sea corridor.

According to the ECA report, costs for the A1 motorway in Romania are 11 percent lower than initially estimated.

The A1 motorway in Romania is a key component of the Rhine-Danube Corridor and, within Romania, provides a direct connection between the capital city Bucharest and the Hungarian border at the Nadlac crossing point.

Prospects for the completion of the A1 motorway have thus improved, and the project could be commissioned ahead of the 2030 deadline.

The content of this article is based on reporting by AFP, Agerpres, ANSA, dpa, EFE, PAP as part of the European Newsroom (enr) project. AGERPRES (editing by: Simona Klodnischi)