PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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From a regional development perspective, the international investment focus is likely to
exacerbate the problematic trend of increasing economic disparity between the prospering
western border regions and the more struggling regions facing the eastern border. More
importantly, EU grant funding ignores what is probably the most important transport
infrastructure investment need in the CEE countries, namely urban transport. ISPA grant
funds cannot be used for urban transit projects, although most ailing public transport
systems and skyrocketing motorization pose major challenges to CEE cities. Given that
major CEE capitals like Budapest, Warsaw or Prague are the most important sites for
economic and social production in the region, it seems particularly troublesome that the
EU transport funds have no mechanism for lending for urban and regional transport.
Public transport investments are equally crucial in secondary cities.
The argument that EU grant funding for urban transport projects is precluded due
to the subsidarity principle remains an important objection. However, the problem with
this line of argument is that there is in fact one type of urban transport infrastructure
which is eligible for EU grant funding under ISPA and PHARE, and that is ring roads
and bypasses around major towns. So in the end, there is a de-facto built-in road bias in
EU lending. While these road-based new construction projects receive precious EU grant
funding, the modernization of CEE’s struggling, mostly rail-based urban transit systems,
which are often directly competing for suburban ridership along ring road alignments, are
left to the countries, or even worse: the municipalities themselves. In Chapter 8, I
showed that the fear that ISPA’s anti-urban bias is ultimately contra-productive for
developing sustainable transport systems in the CEE candidate countries is something