PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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development work on transport towards policies and programs that improve public
transport and promote door-to-door service. The executive summary specifically talks
about the relationship between public transport networks and the TENs, calling them the
basis for a network “which is environmentally sustainable.” Specifically, the Green
Paper claims the following:
The TENs obviously related to long distance links, but equally clearly these long
distance routes must link into local transport systems. The Commission will favor
those TENs links which interconnect with local systems and which promote public
transport.
(Commission of the European Communities 1996a, Executive Summary)
As we will see in later chapters, this claim stands in direct contrast to EU-related
funding in the case of the Central Eastern Europe candidate states in general, and the case
of ring road funding in particular. The most significant current grant source of transport
infrastructure funding in CEE is ISPA, and ISPA specifically focuses on TEN priority
corridors in the road and rail sectors but it thereby explicitly excludes public transport. In
the particular case of Budapest, detailed in Chapter 8, the M0 ring road provides a classic
example of a road infrastructure that indeed interconnects with local transport systems,
but which, by receiving large sums of international funding from the EU and its related
funding institutions (in this case the EIB), is further accelerating car use and inducing
sprawl, putting local transit systems at a further disadvantage.
5.3.6 The White Paper on Fair Payment for Infrastructure Use
Many of the key contents in this paper already appeared in the controversial 1995
Green Paper on Fair and Efficient Pricing (Commission of the European Communities
1995). The premise of this important White Paper is that “the great diversity of