PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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internationally-linked priority transport network for the CEE region displayed quite a
different dynamic from the type of targeted “missing links” industry pet project lobbing
that went on during the development of the TEN priority projects. Both the Helsinki
Corridor and the TINA processes were steered by the EU Commission under the critical
eyes of the national governments, and without any discernable prevailing influence of
either private sector interests or civil society. Hence, I had to somewhat reconsider my
“Decisional-Power” proposition which had assumed a combined predominance of both
national and multi-national corporate interests in transport decision-making both inside
and outside the EU. Interestingly, while from the point of view of the Commission, the
TINA process was an attempt to politically and scientifically justify their foreseen
emphasis on international corridors with regard to future ISPA grant funding, from the
point of view of the participating CEE governments, TINA was their best chance to
“amend” the Helsinki Corridor commitments and to make a case for the inclusion of
additional national priority networks. Once agreed upon, the corridor backbone
prioritizations proved hard to undo.
In Chapter 8, I analyzed the first two years of EU pre-accession grant-making for
transport infrastructure investments under the EU ISPA (Instrument for Structural
Policies for Pre-Accession) program in two of the most advanced candidate countries,
Poland and Hungary. The experience of the first two years showed that the ISPA
National Strategies played very different roles in the two case study countries in terms of
re-organizing national transport policies. While Polish official(s) took the writing of the
ISPA national strategy document as a welcome opportunity to force their own
government to develop a medium to long-term, mode-specific list of priorities in the