PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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9.2.2 The Northern Section: A heavily disputed fait accompli
The second section on the priority list was the controversial Northern section
around Dunakezi which was to connect the old national road No. 2 and the new M2
highway - both running straight north – with the M3 highway starting in the North of
Budapest and running West. This section was completed in 1999, albeit with certain
amendments and under strong protests from citizen and environmental groups. Further
details of this controversial section are discussed in section 9.4. The project received cofunding
through a € 72 million loan from the EIB and a € 14.26 million grant from the
EU Phare program. 3
In the respective Phare project evaluation fiche, the objective of the
EU intervention is described as follows:
The project purpose is to construct by-passes of the National Road No. 2, parts of the
M0 (ring road of Budapest) motorway and interchanges to M3 (which leads to the
center of Budapest) motorway and to the local network (old No. 2 national road). The
projects contributes to the following overall Phare objective: To ensure a balance
[sic] development of and between national roads, feeder and trunk roads and
international links which constitute transit corridors and paths for external trade.
[Emphasis added]
This justification is interesting, since rather than just transit corridors in the
classic sense (i.e. roads that carry a dominant share of non-local users), the EU here also
purports to fund the more general development of a “balanced system” of different types
of roads, including feeder roads to international corridors and trunk roads, thus harkening
back to “cohesion”/“polycentricity” arguments rather than “missing-links”/“bottleneck”
arguments. Of course, the EU Phare program would only contribute to a balanced
development by funding this privileged link if (additional international) funding for other
3 For additional information on the EU Phare program see Chapter 7.