PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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10.4.1 Taking Action on Strategic Environmental Assessment
Recently restated rhetorical commitments to perform strategic environmental
assessments (SEAs) on major transport infrastructure investment packages (see CEC
2001d:45) remain largely unimplemented, although there are notable exceptions
(especially with regard to current plans to perform SEAs along the Via Baltica corridor).
Unfortunately, since decisions on the TENs and their priority projects as well as decisions
on the TINA and the Pan-European Corridors were largely a fait accompli by the late
1990s, the calls for SEAs on the TENs and the TINA network were already somewhat
obsolete at the time they first became official EU rhetoric. 2
Nevertheless, environmental
advocates continue to argue that SEAs should be performed of the Pan-European
transport plans. Since the Commission itself has already developed the necessary
methodologies, this is simply a matter of mustering the political will and taking action.
As recently as May 2002, the European Parliament took a plenary vote deciding that the
TENs and the TINA network should be subjected to SEAs. So far, transport ministers
and the Commission have not followed this lead. It is time they did.
10.4.2 Bringing the Urban and Regional Dimensions Back In
Transport infrastructure funding entails win-win, but also win-lose relationships
between different geographical scales. In the “realities” part of my study, I agreed with
key international experts that the strong concentration of grant funds onto major
international corridors is problematic from the point of view of the recipient countries.
2 In the cases where SEA methodologies were applied, they were only performed on individual corridors,
but never on entire networks. Most importantly, they were never applied on the entirety of Pan-European
transport policies and plans. The DG TRENs Manual on SEA in Transport was only completed in 1999.
For additional information on SEAs in the context of environmental and transport decision-making, see the
materials provided by DG Environment under http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/eia/sea-support.htm .