Committee on Transport and Tourism Ordinary meeting
Legend
Transcript markers
- text Sentence being played
- text Search result
- text Intervention cited by the link you opened
Click a sentence to play the video from that moment. Select text to quote it with the speaker, timestamp and link.
More options
TRAN European Parliament
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 1
I think it's rejected. Can we try again once? Who is in favor? Who is against? No.
Rejected by one vote.
Speaker 1
Yes. It's rejected by one vote. 20 in favor, 21 against, and no abstentions. So we go on. Compromise three.
Who is in favor? Who is against? Abstentions are adopted. Compromise four. Who is in favor?
Who is against? Abstentions. Adopted. Compromise five in favor? Against?
Abstentions. Adopted. Compromise six in favor? Against? Abstentions are adopted.
Compromise seven, who is in favor? Who is against abstentions? It's adopted, I think.
Yeah.
Speaker 1
So that compromise, eight. Who is in favor? Who is against? Abstentions are adopted. Compromise nine in favor?
Against, up, abstentions adopted. Compromise 10, who is in favor, against abstentions, adopted. Compromise 11 in favor, against, Abstentions? Adopted. Compromise 11a.
Who is in favor? Who is against? Abstentions? It's rejected. Yes.
Oh, I opened the if yes. Okay. We opened the vote. It's compromise 11a. Open the vote.
We close the vote. It's rejected. It's 26 against 15 in favor. So now we go to the final vote. It's a roll-call vote.
We open the vote. We close the vote. It's adopted 39 in favor, one against, one abstention. And now we vote on the mandate. We open the vote.
We close the vote. It is adopted. 38 in favor, 1 against, and no abstentions. Thank you very much.
will not, yes. I will tell.
Speaker 1
know, I put just to know the accent. Okay. Colleagues. Take your seats, please. Please.
Hello. Okay. Let's now move on to the next point on our agenda, which is the exchange of use with the European coordinators for the three corridors of the Trans European Transport Network, the TEN-T. Mr Danielson? Thank you.
According to the apology. According to the regulation in force, nine European transport corridors and two horizontal priorities structure and support the completion of the trans-European transport network. They are the backbone of the 10 T's crossing Europe from east to west and from north to south along important traffic axis. The transport corridors go beyond the EU to connect us with Switzerland, Norway, Ukraine, Moldova, and the Western Balkans. The European transport corridors integrate the rail freight corridors mainly to coordinate infrastructure investment planning.
A European coordinator is appointed for each corridor as a result of priority. These coordinators are essential for the governance of the tentee as they oversee the progress of the corridor or priority, and also act as ambassadors of the 10 t policy. So now, dear colleagues, it is with great pleasure that I welcome today three coordinators, missus Catherine Troutman for the North Sea Baltic corridor, mister Pawel Wojciechowski for the North Sea Mediterranean corridor, and mister Matthias Rutte for the horizontal priority European rail traffic management system, the ERTMS. So dear TNT coordinators, thank you for agreeing to come and discuss with us today the latest developments of your respective corridor and priority. I give the floor first to for our presentations.
You have eight minutes maximum each, please, for your first presentation. And then after we begin the debate, and you will have at the end for your final remarks. Thank you very much. So we start with Mrs. Troutman. You have the floor, madam.
Thank you.
Catherine Trautmann
Thank you very much, Mrs. President, honorable members of the European Parliament. Ladies and gentlemen, next slide, please. I am the coordinator of the North Sea-Baltic. Next slide. And you have on the screen the alignment of the railroad, the different ports in blue, and also in yellow, the urban nodes.
So you see that the extension is very long, but I will present at the moment some issues, some topics. First, rate the Baltic cars. Second, the next step, greening of transport, military mobility, the Arctic challenge, and the high-speed rate. So I would like to update you about the corridor in a short period of time. We are currently developing the work plan for the corridor, which gives a detailed analysis of where we stand.
I encourage you to look at it when it will be published in the summer. The main figures in the work plan can give you a good idea. 289 projects with a cost of 146,000,000,000 are planned. There are 94 urban nodes, of which most already have a sustainable urban mobility plan. Please allow me today to take a broader view, looking at the trends and changes that I have seen as coordinator since 2014.
Over this long period, I have seen a lot of progress for Rail Baltica. Rail Baltica went from an idea to a geopolitical necessity. I remember the fighting about the project set up twelve years ago, when it was starting from practically zero. In the meantime, many designs are ready, land has been acquired, and states have adopted special laws for the project. Construction has started.
You can now see construction sites for Rey Baltica in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Of course, building a project as one project between three countries of this size is never easy. Rey Baltica is more than 870 kilometers long. This is longer than the Paris Marseille line or Madrid Barcelona, which is only 621 kilometers long. Any such project needs careful management.
When three parties are involved, complexities necessarily increase. But building Rail Baltica is a necessity. The Baltic States and Poland must speed up the construction. The three Baltic states must be better connected to the rest of the EU. This is essential in times like this.
Rail Baltica will bring economic benefits, but it will also enable us to quickly move large numbers of military equipment and personnel to the Baltic States. And when I say large numbers, I mean 300,000 and more, which are needed to deter Russia. The next step. The Baltic states are working on managing the costs of the project, but they will require continuous support from the next Connecting Europe Facility. I also count on new support in this regard.
We need a strong Connecting Europe Facility to build the cross-border sections out of all European funding programs. CEF is the only one that is used to fund cross-border transport infrastructure investments. Besides a strong CEF, member states also need to allocate sufficient national funding for Redbatica. For me, the corridor was also always a means to make transport environmentally friendly. We have come a long way since 2014.
Back then, biofuels were still regarded as a solution to decarbonize the road sector, and then they were replaced by hydrogen as a future energy carrier for transport. Today, it seems that electrification made the raise. The North Sea Baltic Corridor is a pilot corridor for the clean transport corridor initiative to foster the electrification of heavy duty vehicles. We also work on synergies between the transport and energy networks. The more we electrify transport, the more we need to coordinate transport and energy policies.
Infrastructure investments should help the greening. The barge and work gateway projects increase space efficiency by 30%, reduce CO2 emissions, and improve safety. In the long term, it will shift the equivalent of 300,000 vehicles, trucks, and trips per year from road to barge. But by far, the biggest rupture over the past twelve years was Russia's full-scale attack on Ukraine in 2022. The geopolitical significance of the corridor became evident.
The corridor connects our eastern border with the biggest North Sea ports and the main disembarkation ports. We need to be able to transport armies across the corridor to the east. The entire corridor is key for that. I hope that you will support the military package that the commission proposed last year. Additionally, the military mobility funding from the Connecting Europe Facility will be essential to upgrade the corridor to dual-use standards.
As a result of Russia's war of aggression, the corridor was extended to Ukraine, which we now want to fully integrate into the work of the corridor. I finish on the Arctic Loop. Another topic that I consider important is the corridor's connection to the Arctic. It is important for security and for the rare earth minerals, which we need to become independent of China. Pat Cox and me, we have put an emphasis on this northern connection on our Arctic loop on our list of priorities long before Mr. Trump discovered his passion.
for the
Catherine Trautmann
North. And finally, a topic that is important will be high-speed rail. The commission published its high-speed rail action plan in November. In Western Europe, it is normal for us to jump on a train in Brussels and travel the 300 kilometers to Paris in one hour twenty. Poland is making such building, such connections, and investing massively in its railway network.
The Baltic states are trying with Rail Baltica. EU citizens in the East should also have the possibility to travel easily between regional centers. It's a question of equity. I thank you for your attention. Thank you, Mrs. President.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much, Mrs. Troutman. Mister Goytakovsky, the floor is yours, sir.
Paweł WOJCIECHOWSKI
Okay. Now. Okay. Now, madam chair, thank you very much. Honorable members of the European Parliament, ladies and gentlemen, it's a great pleasure to be here with you today.
I'm particularly pleased to present you the latest development of the North Sea Rhine Mediterranean corridor, a project which is really at the heart of Europe. It's very important, and it connects Europe. It's very substantial for Europe's economy and European mobility. It has been some time since I've been here since November 2023, and a lot of things have happened. And a lot of steps have been taken to complete the corridor.
So one thing that is very particular is that the two corridors that were before, North Sea Mediterranean Corridor and Rhine Alpine Corridor, were merged. And also we have the big merger after, I would say, Brexit, which is important. And, therefore, we have this huge corridor that connects the North Sea with the Mediterranean. And let me just briefly talk about the corridor, and where we're moving. And you can see the corridor on the map, of course.
And, as I said, you know, it's the most significant corridor in Europe, which connects, you can see Dublin. The Irish ports, goes through to the North Sea ports here in Netherlands, Belgium and France and all the way through very developed industrial regions in France, Germany, of course, in Switzerland as well, and it goes to the Northern Italy and ends in Marseille and, Genova. So it's really very, very important. It used to be called the blue banana, you know, by the way, this region, and it's very, very important in terms of economy. It is about catchment is about 35% of the Europeans' EU GDP.
So it's quite important. So but despite the fact that this infrastructure is quite well developed here in the corridor, we have a lot of things which are different in the corridor, one of them is bottlenecks. You know? Bottlenecks. You know?
It's so heavy industry, so a lot of traffic. And bottlenecks, especially in rail, limit performance, reliability, and resilience. So addressing them is essential today. So let me just say that in the past couple of years, we have seen real progress since I'm in from 2023 when I was here in the parliament for a hearing, and you have seen a lot of improvement of locks in Netherlands, Belgium and France, upgrades along the Rhine River in France, rail connectivity such as, for example, to Malpensa Airport from Milano. So all of them, all the steps, strengthen the corridor, but, of course, we are far away from the completion by 23rd in terms of core network.
And, one thing that will happen, this year even, I was a couple of months or two months ago in Rastadt, seeing the Tunel that collapsed before. The Rastadt Tunel will be completed. Okay? So this is a good thing by the end of the year. So it's very encouraging, but not sufficient.
I think, the progress should continue, of course, depending on how much fiscal space the governments have and how much the big envelope, the connected bureau facility will be structured. But, when you move to delivery, when Katrina mentioned that working on the work plan, we are all working on the work plans. You know, we are consulting with the member states, and then we'll be sending it to the minister for approval. Now I could say the work plan is based on a couple of elements. One is the most important is to complete key cross-border infrastructure and remove bottlenecks.
This is, without saying, has to be the primary goal of all the corridors. Of course, they're not talking about horizontal priorities, but for us, it's the most important element, to ensure efficient variable flows through completing the specialty cross-border links and bottlenecks wherever they exist. Second, of course, is interoperability and digitization. Of course, we have this idea that was being implemented of common governance, for example, between right freight corridors, which relate to the rail, and our governance, which is the corridor governance to merge together, to have the operational issues intertwined with the investment decisions in the corridor, which kind of provides a push maybe for some conditioning on whether you get the money not only just for investments, but also to improve the operations. And, Ilham Thames is in the middle.
You know, the most important element of that, of course, Matias will talk about it later. And sec so we need to, especially to accelerate Irem Temes. Here, of course, in the corridor, we have some 21% completion, but still needs a lot of things to be done. I'm afraid we will not be able to finish by 2030. Third, it is very important to me, especially in the congested corridor is green, and, to transition to sustainable transport is essential.
Electrification, charging, infrastructure, infrastructural tender fuels, we must move forward with all of those elements because it affects people who are around in the neighboring areas, you know, in the cities, in the ports. Fourth, resilience and preparedness, which means, of course, climate resilience, but also some resilience to disruption. You know, thinking about geopolitics and now so Katrina mentioned, issues related to military mobility are very important in all the corridors, not just, you know, in the East or maybe in the South. You know? I think that we have to think about military mobility all everywhere in Europe.
You know? So it's very important. Finally, governance and financing. The most important is how to be efficient but effective and how to deliver and complete. And we have to delay the reduce the delays, think about procurement, how to improve and coordinate, how to put the money where it should have the most benefits, economic benefits to the corridors, and how to mix the private and public investments and how to use efficiently the Connected Hero facility.
So all of it is very much ahead of us. I am, as European coordinator, fully committed to delivering to this vision, and I'm looking for your support. And thank you for your attention. Eight minutes have passed. Thank you.
Matthias RUETE
Thank you very much, madam chair and honorable members of parliament. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a great pleasure for me to be here to report to you on the work I've been trying to do on ERTMS. ERTMS has been around for a long time. But to a certain extent, I'm very happy to report to you that the deployment of EATMS is actually accelerating. I have just finalized my work plan.
So before my colleague coordinators are doing their work plans, to a certain extent, they wanted me to have a horizontal look at the EITMS deployment. So I finalized it, and it's in the process of being transmitted to Parliament. The work plan as such has something like 200 pages. So you get a lot of information out of it. And I hope you find it useful as well.
We're making progress. Also, very much thanks to the legislation that was adopted by the European Parliament, the TNT regulation. Because until we had the TNT regulation to a certain extent, the old regulations to a certain extent allowed coexistence of different systems in the European Union, whereas we have now moved towards a vision of a single European safety system, which is ERTMS, which is, by the way, also the gold standard worldwide. So we have a lot of EATMs deployment outside the European Union. I consider the EATMS implementation of strategic importance for the railway.
Let me give you just a few points. The first one is, obviously, the digitalization of railways, and ERTMS is the backbone of the digitalization of railways. It is also very important in terms of the strengthening of the European railway industry. I've already said that it is the gold standard. We are, to a certain extent, world leaders still in this area.
Obviously, there are competitors around as well, and you know who I'm talking about. Military mobility is also very closely linked to interoperability and resilience, and ERTMS contributes to this. And last but not least, obviously, a high speed rail network without ETCS would just not work. If you gain half an hour in terms of speed but then need two hours to change the locomotives, you basically can give up the idea of a high-speed rail network. So you need the TMS on that as well.
The coordinators on the European transport corridors will be putting forward their work plans, as you heard from Catherine and Pavel, this year. But to a certain extent, I've been already looking at the corridors and looking at the issues on the corridors in terms of EITMS deployment, and you'll find that in my work plan. And hopefully, their work plans will actually take into account what I found in my work plan. Now the perspective in terms of the rollout of ERTMS, I don't like talking about the glass being half full or half empty. Basically, what I want to say is the glass is filling, but it's not filling as quickly as it should.
If I look at the legislation and the objective that we have in terms of the eATMS deployment by 2030 in the core network, what we know now is that we will get about 50%. So we are missing 50% in terms of EOTMS deployment. This is already quite a lot because we will be moving towards something like 40,000 kilometers inside the European Union, but we could do better. Same thing about the fleet. If you look at EATMS deployment on the fleet, you will see that we have, at the moment, something like 19% of the fleet equipped.
By 2030, if I look at the planning, we will be getting to something like 40% of the fleet. But again, this is not sufficient. And to a certain extent, we've seen it over the last years quite clearly that EATMS deployment very often takes a kind of stop-and-go approach. You have the deployment on the track side. And then suddenly, the infrastructure manager wakes up and says, okay, go, God, but I haven't got the material to use the TMS.
And so we have to continue with the national system, and vice versa. So to a certain extent, parallel equipment of trackside and vehicles is a very important one. And you have actually postulated that in the 10T regulation by talking about the synchronous deployment of the. I'll be very frank with you. We have leading and lagging member states in as much as the ATMS deployment is concerned. The pioneers are Luxembourg, Belgium, Slovenia, Czechia, Denmark, and Austria.
There's also great progress in terms of work in Poland and Italy. Spain needs mentioning as a first mover in terms of ELTMS, but we have weaknesses in as much as, in particular, France and Germany are concerned. At the same time, I could also mention a few others. You will find the exact hit list in my work plan in terms of color coding, from green to red. And unfortunately, there's a lot of red in my work plan.
The largest deficit is actually on the cross-border. And this is where, to a certain extent, I'm build hoping very much for the work plan of the European transport co coordinate transport corridors coordinators because we have to focus very much on the cross border issue. You will find in my work plan an annex, annex nine, five, six pages, with a lot of Red Crosses. That's where the development on one border doesn't coincide with the development of the other border. And so to a certain extent, this will be a focus of my fellow coordinators, but also of myself to have looking very much on the cross-border analysis.
There's a lot in the report. I'm quite happy to come back and talk about it a little more in detail. But let me focus, if I can have the next slide, please, just on some of the conclusions that I draw in the report. 10 conclusions altogether, probably not readable, but will get them anywhere. But I will concentrate on just mentioning four conclusions.
First of all, we need to strengthen EU governance and coordination. I think this is very important. We have different places, the European Rail Agency, Europe's Rail, the Commission, Insignia, who are all working on this. But we need, to a certain extent, to work much more on strengthening EU governance. We need to align the implementation plans as much as the cross border is concerned, and that is, I've already said all that is needed there.
We need to invest in building the industrial capacity in Europe. At the moment, the industry tells us that they can actually furnish something like 5,000 kilometers of ETCS in terms of trackside and something like 2,500 onboard units. We need probably to build up the capacity of the industry in order to get to our aims. And for that, obviously, we need predictable and stable finances. And this is why my plea dossier also goes to you to make sure that in CEF3, but also in other instruments, there's sufficient money in order to allow for the deployment of EATM.
Madam Chairman, I've already spoken too long. So thank you very much.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much for your presentations. Now we open the debate, giving the floor first to our coordinators of the political groups, Mister Giseke, for three minutes each. Thank you very much.
Jens Gieseke
Yeah. Thank you very much, madam chair. I'm gonna be speaking German. I've had a long Easter holiday. I think there are German speakers on the panel, so you can understand me.
Now, Miss Trautman, in your report, you were talking about the military mobility aspects as well, and that obviously is something which cross-cuts through all the different components. 1,700,000,000 to up to 17,000,000,000 increase in the new budgetary period is what is planned. And I'd be interested to note, given that ambition, you've mentioned dual use and making infrastructure fit for use, particularly thinking about Ukraine. That's important. But in your domain, you've got inland waterways and railways, and also ports. How do you imagine that this requirement for financing is going to be met?
17,000,000,000 is the whole of Europe for all types of transport. So if we think about the amount of money required, it'd be helpful to have a number, actually. Mister Wojciechowski, I'd like to focus on the inland waterways. You talked in your account about the problems in Belgium and France. It also says that the project is underway.
We've got a problem with the low water levels in the Rhine in Germany. So what's happening there? That would be interesting to hear a little bit more about. Mister Ruta, thank you very much. It was very interesting to listen to what you said.
I think it's a good thing to get a half-full glass, even if it's not yet what's being filled up. When it comes to the TNT regulation and financing, we are doing our bit. ERTMS has never been a problem when it comes to the technology. It's really the implementation of it that's the problem, and the governance of it. You mentioned the good guys and the bad guys when it comes to countries.
I'm gonna mention any names. There's a lot of scope, a lot of headroom to do better. We need to think about best practices. We need to think about how to coordinate better between ourselves. One of the points which I think really is required is more centralization in these difficult geopolitical times.
So, how is it going to work? It's all cross-border in the end. So we've got implementation, different speeds in different countries. How are we going to get best practice set as a gold standard? The RTMS is really a gold standard, and it's important, therefore, that we have optimization between member states when it comes to the implementation.
As a German, I'm prepared to admit that Slovenia or Luxembourg is good. How we're gonna need to learn from them. How are we going to get it on to the road? How when is the rubber going to hit the road or the rail, as it happens in this case?
Johan Danielsson
Thank you. Well, and my bad English is due to the Easter break, but it will be English. Firstly, thank you to all three coordinators. And firstly, perhaps on the North Sea Baltic because it is, as you expressed, an important link between the Nordic region, the Baltic States and Central Europe, both in terms of connectivity, but today also in resilience and military mobility at the EU's Eastern Flank. And as a Swede, perhaps also important in this context, the growing importance of Northern Scandinavia and also, as you have stated, the Arctic Loop, both regarding military mobility, security, but also in the industrial transformation that we are in.
So could you perhaps develop a little bit how this strategic importance will be reflected in your upcoming work plan for the North Sea-Baltic Corridor? Then a question on the North Sea Mediterranean Corridor that is perhaps a little bit more specific. Because the whole aim of the 10 T corridors is to facilitate seamless and interoperable cross-border transport. And this goes beyond funding. And at the moment, we have some concerns with Switzerland that has adopted unilateral measures impacting rail freight services, which we believe could be in breach of the EU Switzerland Land Transport Agreement.
We will have the European Commission in the committee later today to discuss the issue. But have you as a coordinator had any discussion with Swiss authorities to ensure their commitment and support a unified approach on cross-border rail freights? Because, I mean, you can finance the infrastructure, but it's also important that we are able to use it seamlessly in Europe. Then for the RTMS, obviously, funding is of key importance. The technology is there.
But it's also, of course, important that we have a real political will to ensure one single European signaling system. And as I understand it, at the moment, there continue to be national divergences in the ERTMS deployment, which risk, of course, then creating fragmentation. And as I understood your last slide, you more or less already answered my question, because the question is, does this divergence still exist? Is there a need for more EU level oversight of the national implementation? I understood the question.
Well, the answer was yes in your 10 points. But perhaps you could develop how should this EU oversight ensure that we have one EU, that we implement the same system in all national member states. And since I have seconds left and I like to hear my own voice, perhaps to the two corridors. Because, as we heard from the coordinator of the ERTMS, the cross-border links are important. But at the same time, now when we have this focus also on the financing on the missing cross border links.
For me, what is missing is how do we really ensure the whole network? If all the EU money is also diverted to the cross-border links, how do U. S. Coordinates? What should we do to ensure that we actually create the whole corridors?
Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Mr. Danielson. From the Patriots, I don't see Mister Heidel, somebody, some colleague. No. We passed to the ECR. From the ECR, not for the time being.
Valérie Devaux
Thank you very much. Thank you very much for these very elucidating presentations. The guidelines to its attendees are being set up for the different portions of the corridors, and there's a timetable for projects underway bringing more visibility to those that run the projects. Now this has already proven its worth, not least in the North Sea Mediterranean corridor. Now when it comes to the use of the tool, I wonder what you would say about that, down to Mister Reuter.
The FRMCS system may not be mature, but in the future, it might prove a little less onerous than ERTMS. What do you think the prospects are when it comes to that?
Speaker 16
I will speak in Spanish. So, first.
Of all, thank you to all three speakers for your hard work that you are carrying out in your respective corridors and in the development of the RTMS. And I don't want to sort of mention the elephant in the room, which is the homogenization and standardization of the system. More even than professor Matthias explained, which he did explain very well, and defined very well in his plan. In fact, you clearly delineated the conditions for the development of a plan, specifically that rolling stock goes hand in hand with development. He talked about standardization and financing.
I'm going to focus on standardization first. We see that we have 134 different types of ESF tests for 16 countries. Each country in turn has different systems. Every bit of material that we're manufacturing needs to be compatible with the ERTMS and needs to be developed on the basis of each specific company that makes it. And this means that there is a risk, as the SID coordinator said, calls into question the entire set of the system and its coordination.
And not to mention operators who are driving trains, for example, and who have to deal with drive trucks and buses on the roads, but who are not able to read the different road signs that are there, and each type of road sign is different, and so they're not homogeneous throughout the different member states. You cannot have a uniform system in one area, and then move on to another. So what we need to do is focus on what we can do in a clear and direct way to standardize and homogenize the entire system. How can we actually make progress with a clear European vision so that we can have a real solution where we can make progress hand in hand and not have a fragmented system and continue to develop this fragmentation? So what can we do?
Because each line needs to be homogenous with equipment that is tailored to that particular line. So how do we handle this? And secondly, how do we ensure that member states who are on the red and yellow lines, as you said, how do we get them to comply with the 2050 objectives, which we all established for 2030. So, what can be done? What should we do?
And then, finally, financing. We are using European funds to finance 13% to 15% of the entire fund, and we really need to multiply our rate by 5. So how can we make sure that we attain this objective? Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much. From the left, I don't see Mrs. Skilone. I give the floor to Mr. Snorbosch from the ESN. Thank you.
Speaker 19
Yes. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thanks to all the coordinators. My first question goes out to Mr. Hortmann. You mentioned SEF, the importance of SEF, of course, for all these projects that you mentioned, like Reim Baltica.
And my first question would be, do you think that SEF provides actually enough funds, sufficient funds to implement all these new tasks at ports in the North Sea and at the Baltic Sea, to provide for military mobility that you mentioned as well. Same goes out to the infrastructure in these ports, in the North Sea and in the Baltic Sea. Do you think that we need an expanded rail infrastructure in these ports to live up to these new challenges? The third question to you, miss Tortman, would also be connected to SEF because we already experienced drone attacks or drone overflights at the Baltic Coast and also cyberattacks. We know from which direction they came.
And, do you think that we need more protection against these kinds of attacks at the ports in the Baltic as well? And doctor Rutte, you mentioned that we have a wide gap between the pioneers and those countries that are lagging behind. Unfortunately, Germany doesn't belong to the pioneers in this case. Is there something that countries like Germany or France can learn from the other, from the pioneers, by ways of best practice? Or do you choose to maybe plan, develop new models, through the EU?
I think the best way would be to learn from the others, but maybe you can elaborate on this question. Thanks very much.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much, Mr. Snorbosch. Now we have finished the debate with the coordinators of the political groups. We continue with the colleagues who want the floor for two minutes, please. We start with Mister Gibbenes Laraz. Borja, you have the floor.
Thank.
Borja Giménez Larraz
Thank you very much. I just wanted to say that the deployment of the RTMS system is essential if we are to have a true European rail system, but progress remains insufficient. The ERTMS system is, of course, important to ensure interoperability between countries, to ensure greater security, capability, and efficiency. These are issues which we're all clear on, but what we see is that implementation and development are slow and are also unequal. And there's another thing that draws my attention particularly, which is the lack of progress in France and Germany, who are the two locomotives of development in this area, and we need to make sure that things advance.
So, in the view of the coordinator, why are these two countries running so late? Do you think that they're not making enough progress considering that they are two major economic powers? Perhaps there is a lack of political will, and I would like to know why there is a lack of political will in those two countries. And from that point of view, and being aware of the project regarding all of the EU member states, I'd like to know whether you think that from the point of view of Europe, any measures could be taken to encourage these two countries to continue making progress in the development of this network? Missus Baljou.
Speaker 22
Thank you. I have questions to both coordinators, Missus Straitman and Mister Worshiekowski. We see now that in a lot of countries, there's an emphasis on maintenance. So it's more the maintenance of the existing tracks and roads than the new investments. And do you see this as, well, a threat to completing the whole corridors?
Speaker 23
Because we see, I see in The Netherlands that the focus is now on maintenance, and I see that in many more countries. It's also needed, but how do you look at it in comparison to what is needed for the corridors?
Speaker 24
Thank you. I want to go back to the beginning, actually, and also to what you mentioned before about the non-best performer like Germany or France, and we had many questions about why and what we can do better, what we can learn from other countries, and I would like to follow-up the question on how can we increase pressure on member states. So I think it's not just about best practice or how, but also about pressure. And second question would be the cost of upgrading each vehicle has almost doubled. What steps are being taken to bring prices down?
Speaker 31
And the last question is also about the cost. The total cost is about 85 to, I think, €1,000,000,000. How realistic is it to secure sufficient funding in the next financial framework? Thank.
you.
Isabelle Le Callennec
Thank you, madam chair. Thank you for the presentations. The RTT is important for Europe and for France. I was elected in Brittany, and the greater West needs this connection. You've talked about the weakness of France, and here I'm picking up on what my Spanish colleague said.
And as a French person, I'd like to know what the weaknesses are. Is there any way to correct them? And you're talking, are you talking about sufficient funds in the context of the MFF, which we are discussing here at the European Parliament? Do you know how much this wall of investment needs to be in order to be able to attain the 3,500 kilometers and 18,000 vehicles necessary? Thank you.
Speaker 27
Thank you so much, madam chair. Thank you so much, also for your presentations. I have three questions. The first one regarding the North Sea Baltic Corridor, which connects some of the most important industrial and port regions. And so I'm just wondering what possibilities you see to increase the shift of freight transport from road to rail along this corridor.
Speaker 28
Then my question regarding the core regarding the North Sea Mediterranean corridor: The European Court of Auditors has recently indicated that the 2030 deadline for completing the 10T core network will not be met. So what is your vision for addressing both significant cost overruns and the delays which have been highlighted in this report? And regarding the ERTMS, we know that it is very costly. So I'm wondering which measurements are going to be taken to reduce the costs and to make it more affordable.
Nikolina Brnjac
Thank you, Chair, for giving me the floor. And I, first of all, apologize I couldn't be here from the beginning, but I have a question for the MTS coordinator. So given the ERA center role, in authorizing the RMTS trackside projects and ensuring compliance and ensuring safety, do you believe that the agency currently has the resources, mandate, and political support needed to help deliver a more coordinated rollout across member states, or do you expect more action on this by DG move? And the second question is that in today's geopolitical and economic context, should RMTS increasingly be seen not only as a transport modernization project, but also as a part of Europe's broader strategic resilience, including the security and cyber resilience of rail infrastructure? And in your view, are industry actors and infrastructure managers already thinking in these terms and doing enough to make our systems more secure?
Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Nicolina. So now we pass the floor again to our coordinators to answer the questions and conclude our debate. We start with Mrs. Troutman, please. Five four, five minutes each. Merci.
Thank.
Catherine Trautmann
Thank you very much, Missus President. I will begin with the questions about the military mobility and the questions of Mister Guisequet and his colleague. Of course, the military mobility is a priority in the corridor, and it was the case also for the first step of the military mobility because we considered that the Rail Baltica could be of dual use. And being conceived as a dual-use rail track, it was feasible to transfer to the military mobility. That's why it was a priority and we could have quite comfortable, if I can say not sufficient, but quite comfortable proportion of the envelope, the first envelope of 1,700,000,000.0.
Of course, the new step of financing the military mobility with 17,000,000,000 is much more, but not sufficient. It goes now with the proposal of NATO for 500 hotspots in all the EU, which is enormous, if I can say, and represents 100 billion euros. So we see that we are very far from the needs for the guarantee for the hotspots, which are selected by NATO and accepted by the European Union. So for our corridors, how can we take this strategic importance in our work. It is, of course, to maintain the priority of the transformation from the gauge today, which is the Russian gauge in the Baltic States to the European gauge.
This transfer must be beginning in '27, so we are very soon at the beginning of this plan. And we discussed a lot with Finland to have also the European gauge in Finland. So in the north, the cross border project between Tonio and Apparanda with 22 kilometers with European gauge from both sides was the beginning of the transfer of gauge from the 1600 millimeters in Finland to the European gauge. This is very important because Finland has a very strategic place. You know that this corridor has the longest border with Russia, and also we are neighbor of Belov Russia.
And now we have this long line until Mariupol going through Kyiv, Kharkiv to Mariupol, which is the longest of all the corridors. So we are three corridors in Ukraine, and the question is the same in Ukraine. So that's why we work together and take the realization of the Rey Baltica as an example for Ukraine to build new gauge infrastructure. Of course, there is a part of transformation. There is a part of the new construction.
The question of the maintenance. The maintenance was asked as a question by the coordinators in one of our seminars, and we said we need to take care of maintenance because we can build new infrastructure. If the ordinary one is not, you know, efficient, it's a problem. So, but it's not our task to look at maintenance, but it can be a problem when a country prefers maintenance than real new realization. With the Netherlands, there is no problem for me.
I work very regularly with this country, and we discuss the priorities. So it's really feasible, and I work also with the ports, with the Belgian and Dutch ports and German ports like Hamburg to prepare them to be ports for disembarkation. So this is also an aspect of military mobility to prepare the ports to the governance and to the disembarkation, new task they have to tackle with. So, on the attacks of drones on the Baltic States, this is really a new problem. I discussed it last week with the mayor of Kharkiv.
He showed me on his phone because he came in Strasbourg, and he could show me new attacks with new systems and especially drones, which are very powerful. And they are just under any capacity to see them, to distinguish them. And this is very complicated. So it's a real danger for our infrastructure. There are reflections on that, of course.
ERTMS can be a system which is sure system and very important to ameliorate efficiency and protection and security for passengers and regular schedules. But, of course, we need to have a special work on this drones attack, are very new and very harmful for the people. So it's Missus President, I think. Yes. Thank you for the questions.
Paweł WOJCIECHOWSKI
Yes. I come from the end. You know? Madam Kirchner here. About the court of auditor, you know, because this was a general question now.
What to do about that? The court of auditors said that a lot of cross border projects will not be completed. And, we, as Canadians, we know it. Okay. We know it because we talk to the ministers.
We talk with the administration, and we are aware of it. But, of course, we have to take into account the reason for that. The reasons for that is, not only the governance issue, you know, on the cross border, but also, you know, the issues such as maybe some in the past, maybe poor planning, you know, happened. You know? Maybe the change of plans, the scope of changes, you know, we see the projects and a lot of projects have been changed.
You know? In meantime, of course, that takes, know, you there's a spiral of different planning, know, and investments decisions have to be changed. Lack of commitment from time to time, but, actually, we pressure commitment. So it's like this is the problem. You know?
It's not a commitment. You know? Commitment is being at least verbal, is being said, you know, yes. We'll do it, but maybe a little bit later, you know, because of the procurement, because of the border citizens, you know, groups in Germany who protest, you know, and against some of the projects and things like that. Some of the external shocks contributed to that as well, the inflation, the energy costs, and all of it taking into account.
Of course, we will have the cost overruns, and this is happening. You know? But if you look at professor Fleiberg for the LSE, he wrote a lot about that. In general, in infrastructure, it's about 40% crossover runs. You know?
This is happening. In nuclear plants, maybe 80%. So it's happening. You know? The question is, can we be less optimistic at the beginning and do the, you know, more kind of baseline scenarios which are more coherent with all the different, you know, issues related to resilience, with the issues of risk awareness of the projects or not.
I mean, if you start the project on the political stance, you want to say, well, we'll do it fast, you know, 10 years. And suddenly, you know, it happens that you cannot do that. You know? And, of course, there was a new government and new governance structures, and it gets complicated. So it's never you can find who is at who will have to, you know, kind of, say why did it not happen.
There are a lot of factors. In Switzerland, because I'm now moving to Switzerland, the Swiss issues. Switzerland, we have very good planning, and they do it in budget on time, like Gotart, Lodgeburg, Tuners. Now talking about the question on Switzerland, Switzerland, of course, has a most developed kind of infrastructure in rail, and they count on Europe to use the cross alpine links. Unfortunately, you know, many countries, you know, from the North, from the South, you know, which is Italy and Germany, are not that eager to have the, you know, the connecting lines to the rail.
And still, the model shift is not happening because we are used to have the heavy, long vehicle, the tiers to travel to Switzerland. And, of course, it has been always a case of, that was debated with Switzerland whether we should run the tracks with Switzerland with no consequences. So this is an issue with Switzerland that we need to think all along about a lot of other things, you know, how to use the Transatlantic plant, how to use the Basel Port because they very much depend on the flow of frying going to Basel. And, therefore, there's a heavy chemical industry. They want to kind of use this as very much an efficient Transalpine network.
And, Europe is not there yet, okay, in terms of talking about Germany from the North and Italy from the South. And to the question on the is a little bit complicated. We are, what can we do as coordinators on the cross border? Well, every time when we are in a mission and we're speaking with Minister, we try to say, well, without operational, you know, upgrades, it will be difficult to go forward. And with other investments, maybe some idea that could be considered is like a common type of management, common testing, or something on the cross-border installations.
You know? I don't know. Maybe Matthias will respond to that. But it's very complicated, you know, because it's a small detail in all the big investments that we're talking about. Now, I will not mention the dual use.
I think there was a question about inland waterways. And, of course, Senesco is a very important topic here that was mentioned here. How about what we do about that? Of course, one thing on the rivers is that we very much underestimate the potential on river transport, inland waterway to river transport. It's, so another thing which is underestimated is resilience.
Resilience to the heat waves in the summer that have the consequences, and may slow that eliminate about almost 50% of the traffic flows, for example, to the Rhine River because of the fact that the shallow waters. So, of course, in this, in the past, in this Bundes Verskes Wege plan, the German, you know, Bundesminster plan for infrastructure, that plan provides some of the improvements. But, of course, a lot of this is clash between the environment and the transport policy as well because of hard beddings, for example, in Germany, so called, you know, in the near the between Efensen and Koblenz area. That's a problem. There is a problem of, and that was that is still being debated, you know, how much funding, what should be the value for money of this type of investment.
I think that will be great benefits to kind of deepen the Rhine River. Also, Saint Esco project that it's of a great value for Europe in terms of freight. I think that we have to think about resilience at the same time as environmental issues. But I think that general is underestimated. And last more last comment on maintenance.
Maintenance is very much, I think, like you mentioned, madam. Course, it's chronically underfunded. It kind of goes in the way of the major investments because sometimes can take slots for maintenance to repair. And, of course, it is an issue that has to be solved mainly in the countries in the regions rather than at the level of the EU because one of the things that we have to think about is how to make a bay major investments, how to finance them and fund them rather than to think about all the details of the maintenance on the ground. And, of course, important is to have the different players like, in RFC, right front corridors, and other, you know, parties to get together to plan properly their maintenance.
So there are sections by sections. You know? Not just we do it here in France and in Germany, we do it some other place, and I have problems of who would the planning, the planning of maintenance in between the countries' member states is very important to eliminate the issues of delays, especially on the rail. Thank you.
Matthias RUETE
Thank you very much, and thank you very much for a number of very interesting questions, which allows me to finish to a certain extent what I was going to present to you anyway. First of all, in the direction of Mr. Giseke, we went wrong with EATMS because of the subsidiarity principle. We needed more centralization. And what we did is we said, let's allow the coexistence of national systems and the single European system.
And it was only in 2024 that in the TNT regulation that you actually postulated, first of all, deadlines in terms of deployment of the ERTMS, and secondly, also that the so-called Class B systems, the national systems actually need to be abolished. The deadlines are unfortunately 2040, 2045, and 2050. So we have, to a certain extent, the comfort of member states saying, okay, this is still down the road. But I think you're quite right in terms of saying we need we should have needed more centralization. My experience from my past when I had to deal with Galileo, with Galileo, we did on the European level, and we made it work, and it was at the same time we kicked off TMS.
So that's in your direction. I think in general terms, what we need to do is we need much more standardization, much more standardization so that we don't have 25 or 26 different EIR TMS systems because they all take into account the national systems. So moving towards standardization is important, and we've been doing this actually already with the help of ERA and the help of Eurotrail, but we need to move forward there. And to a certain extent, these are the two major precepts that I use on the first of all, standardize, and secondly, freeze. Freeze in terms of actually not changing the standards every two or three years, but let the industry work towards the standard.
We still need to do it on 5 gs. That's without question. But otherwise, I think we need, to a certain extent, to have stability in terms of also the framework. We've looked at the costs. And in terms of the cost drivers, if I take just the example of onboard equipment, 30% plus minus of the costs are actually developing the prototype because each national railway company says, yes, we want ERGMS, but by the way, we have a little specific thing, which we want this twiddly thing, which needs a lot of engineering capacity.
So 30% prototype, 40% deployment, and then 30% in terms of actual authorization procedures, in terms of costs. So my third precept, first one, standardize, second one, freeze, third one, debureaucratize. Let's have a look, and we're working together with Eira on these things in terms of seeing whether certain things can actually be accelerated, whether we can have different approaches to that. And I'm quite sure that you will be discussing this also with my colleagues from ERA and from DG Move. In general terms, we've done a calculation of the costs.
And the costs, roughly speaking, are about €85,000,000,000 trackside and for ship between €10,000,000,000 and €50,000,000,000 in terms of onboard equipment. There can be some savings done on that, but that's about the cost. But this actually includes the change of the interlockings. We have interlockings which date from just after the Second World War, even before the Second World War. So the interlockings, that's a major cost in terms of changing and adapting, then also the system on EATMS.
Mr. Danielson, just in your direction, you've launched me on one thing, which is very good. EATMS is so complicated that it is delegated downwards. Delegated downwards in all organizations rather than delegated upwards in terms of actually being seen as a political thing. And the political will and mobilizing the political will is a very important element in terms of making sure that EATMS comes.
And this is where parliament actually has a big role.
Matthias RUETE
play. A few years ago, you came with a resolution on the ELTMS. You might want to think about something in terms of updating this. I'm not launching this as a request, but it would be great if I could have some champions of the ERTMS in the parliament. And this I'll stop with that.
Just as a play doh here, and I'm available for you to talk to you about these things and a lot, and also to explain a lot of other things. Don't get me wrong. When I talk about laggards in terms of eATMS deployment, and you've mentioned France, you've mentioned Germany, they're very different drivers, again, in terms of why they're not doing it. I will not go into that now. I'll talk to the person who wants to deal much more about EATMS on a bilateral basis.
So thank you very much. Thank.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much, Mr. Rutte. Yes. Well, as chair of our trunk committee, I want to thank you all, the three distinguished speakers, for the exchange with our committee. The discussion has showed that the TENTs are a very important pillar for the sustainable mobility and connectivity in all Europe for all Europeans.
And, what's for sure is that the efforts must continue, and all stakeholders must be guided in the right direction. We wish you all the very best success, and we thank you once again. Thank you. Thank you. So now, dear colleagues, this is the end of our morning mission.
In the afternoon, we will start with a joint CET1 meeting on military mobility. Thank you.
Ask anything about this video — I analyse its transcript to answer.