Overview
The EC has recently published the Proposal for a Regulation on Union guidelines for the development of the trans - European transport network -COM (2011) 650/2, that defines the long term strategy for the Ten-T policy up to 2030/2050 and proposes Corridors relevant for the South East Europe (SEE) area. By creating a multilevel formed by Transport Ministries, Regions, Universities, Chambers of Commerce, transport stakeholders and European transport association, a large and coherent platform will contribute to rationalising and optimizing the existing network of South Eastern Europe with the aim to extend the EU transport network (core and comprehensive) to the western Balkans and develop a single transport system for SEE and forging new approach with infrastructure and transport services even in a time of austerity.
The joint evaluation of the proposed extension of the comprehensive EU network to the Western Balkans together with its implication at the internal level (on national spatial plan and on national budget perspectives) and at transnational level such as the level of the short term and long term intervention, the identification of the possible extension of the EU core network will be clearly addressed in relation with EU methodology and interfaced with the results of the transport model with the aim to balance the capacity of the EU corridors with cost-effectiveness.
Concrete initiatives for across the SEE will be jointly carried out in order to discourage the risk of an investment hiatus by addressing the cross border-issues and focusing on the identification of short medium term investments on bottleneck which will be considered both from a physical and administrative perspective. The first web-based ITC interface will be created for exchanging relevant information on technical and administrative aspects of rail and road border crossing points of the SEE.
In this context, in order for this axis to operate successfully, the efficiency of European freight transport must be improved and the WB considered as integrated. Greater interoperability and the easing of across borders procedures are critical to the corridor' success including identifying viable intermodal connections between rail, road and sea
The project will focus on the implementation of common standards across the different administrative procedure that represent together with the company discrimination's, the real hidden cost of the non integration of the SEE area. Moreover it will contribute to the optimisation of international borders management, that includes reducing cross-border transit time, increase regional and international trade by improving border crossings, ensuring that national trade facilitation procedures are compatible with markets and administrative procedures
The project will promote institutional and stakeholders permanent cooperation in order to provide concrete actions and projects to contribute to the Danube strategy for Danube regional, the Adriatic strategy and the Black sea synergy: this platform will serve as a basis for the implementation of the One stop shop along the selected corridor.
A three-layer approach will be used in order to combine and interlink the institutional dimension with the transport model analysis and the contribution of the transport economic dimension on solving the crossborder issues which remain the core part of the project. The project will adopt a common transport model for the entire South East Area, integrated with the rest of Europe and compatible with the current EU system, adequate to be exploited also by public administrations and transport operators.
The core part of the project will be consecrated on:
- Improving the cross-border mobility of the rail freight flows.
- Adopting concrete measures in order to cut the running time in the cross-border points and to ease up the existing bottlenecks in the SEE area.
Funding
Results
ACROSSEE, Accessibility improved at border CROSsings for the integration of South East Europe, SEE/D/0093/3.3/X was a project co-financed by the EU Transnational Cooperation Programme "South-East Europe", working in line with the new EU TEN-T Guidelines and aiming at improving cross-border accessibility in the South -East Europe Area. This objective was reached by promoting prioritization and optimization of the existing network and extending the EU transport network to the Western Balkans. The Acrossee finalized outputs are now available in the downloads area: http://www.acrossee.net/downloads.html