PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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The completion of TEN in transport clearly represents a necessary condition for
spatial integration and raising accessibility. However, studies confirm that to ensure
the maximum benefit from the TEN their development must be integrated into a
broader strategy.
- the medium-sized cities in centrally located regions and located on the TEN nodes
or corridors tend to obtain the major accessibility gains. Many cities on high-speed rail
and motorways networks can expect a significant improvement in their physical
accessibility;
- the main metropolitan areas are also major beneficiaries from TEN
implementation but to a lesser extent than the medium-sized cities. This reflects the
already well developed transport infrastructure in those regions.
- for peripheral and remote regions to gain the maximum benefit from the TEN,
complementary investment in secondary networks will be required.
(Commission of the European Communities 1999b:6, my emphasis)
Hidden in this paragraph is perhaps the frankest admission in official EU
documents that Trans-European Networks in and of themselves reinforce existing
distributions and tend to be localized around key nodes. Insightful as it is, one should not
overstate the importance of this Communication, however. Communications mainly
serve the purpose of clarifying Commission thinking on a particular issue at a particular
time, but there is no direct political commitment resulting from them, and its conclusions
are not necessarily shared by all members of the Commission. 19
Nevertheless its rhetoric
is indicative. The Second Report on Economic and Social Cohesion recently released by
the Commission also explicitly states that infrastructure endowment is “a necessary, but
not sufficient condition for the economic development and competitiveness of a region”
(Commission of the European Communities 2001e:49). So, in the end, the Brussels-
19 Also, since there was no normal transition from the last administration to the present one, but rather a
complete changeover resulting from allegations of corruption against many previous Commissioners, even
internal commitments to previous Communications within the Commission are weak in this case. In the
case of the 1998 Communication on Cohesion and Transport, it was already characterized as “mainly
forgotten” by DG Regio staff in the spring of 2001, although the person who wrote it has since become
more influential within DG Regio.