PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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European ministerial meeting provides an even simpler, earlier explanation: during the
first transport ministers meeting in Prague, one of the Western European ministers
apparently had a sheet with brightly colored corridors on a map of Europe (supposedly
more intended for personal purposes than for official presentation), and this eye-catching
map subsequently became the basis of the corridor concept. Another interesting point is
that the corridor concept was close to the kind of master planning approach that the
representatives from the former Communist countries were used to. As a result, many of
them seem to have been sympathetic to the concept despite the fact that the proposed
corridors did not always express their national priorities, and the various color lines
became the basis for political negotiations at the ministerial level.
Part of the reason that the Helsinki Corridors did not have their basis in detailed
traffic forecasts was that reliable pan-European traffic estimates for East-West flows
simply did not exist at the time (also see below). The more important explanation is that
the corridors were decided upon at a level of decision-making where geopolitics and
national representational interests are simply more important than traffic counts.
Commission staff pointed out, for example, that the Polish delegates did not include a
main link from Berlin to Gdansk in the network – presumably largely for historical
reasons. (Overall, however, the Polish government predominantly emphasized northsouth
connections, less so east-west ones.)
Since the corridors had to be determined by what would be politically acceptable
to all stakeholders, the various selected routes were hardly of equal importance with
regard to real existing Trans-European trade and transport flows. For political reasons,
each capital city had to be included in at least one of the corridors. Although they were