PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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selection, there was no actual cooperation on international planning or joint financing of
priority investments.
European Transport Ministers from both EU and Central Eastern European
countries met for the first post-transition, Pan-European Ministers of Transport
Conference in Prague in 1991. After that, the TEN process was immediately included in
the Maastricht Treaty. Article 129c of the Treaty stipulates that
the Community shall establish a series of guidelines covering the objectives, priorities
and broad lines of measures envisaged in the sphere of trans-European networks; these
guidelines shall identify projects of common interest.
In the following years, the European Union’s TEN program emerged as an
increasing focus of the EU’s “eastern thrust” (Ross 1998:187) and reflection of the EU’s
pre-accession strategy. At the first Pan-European Transport Conference, the Dutch
Ministry suggested that representatives focus on developing a map of transport priority
corridors connecting the European Union to its eastern and southern neighbors. The
concept was endorsed again at the June 1993 Transport Ministers’ summit in
Copenhagen. The first set of nine international priority corridors was subsequently
adopted at the Pan-European Transport Conference in Crete in 1995. Although most of
the routes selected for the TENs were originally part of the UNECE E-routes, the
dramatic shifts apparent in East-West travel patterns had already required some changes
and additions to these older route selections. One corridor was added as late as June
1997 during the Pan-European conference in Helsinki, completing what is now
commonly referred to as the Helsinki Corridors. In addition, the conference identified
several larger transport areas around the Barents, the Caspian, the Adriatic and the