PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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of these loans, and in particular those from the World Bank, included much needed funds
for upgrading and maintenance rather than for new construction, so it is true that without
taking a closer look at the specific purpose of each loan, this striking statistic ultimately
tells us little about how “sustainable” a particular loan was. Nevertheless, this past bias is
a good indicator that in the absence of particular efforts on the part of both the lender and
the recipient government to the contrary, it is much more difficult to attract international
funds for the rail than for the road sector. One should also remember, however, that
together the road and rail sectors accounted for about 90% of all assessed investment
needs in Poland and Hungary. EU and IFI funding are therefore consistent with needs
assessments at least in the sense that they almost exclusively funded road and rail
infrastructures in Poland and Hungary.
Third and perhaps most important, contrary to ISPA and its predecessors, Phare
and LISF, the IFIs also attributed a sizeable share of their loans in Hungary and Poland
towards urban transport projects. Citing the principle of subsidiarity as the central
reason, the EU currently leaves funding for public transit entirely to its house-bank, the
EIB. I will return to this problematic issue both in this and in the following chapter. It
certainly seems a bitter irony that at a time where official European Union transport
policy is more actively than ever favoring rail and urban public transit as “more
sustainable modes,” there is currently no funding mechanism available for channeling
any EU transport sector grants into urban areas other than for ring roads and bypasses
forming part of the Helsinki corridors.