Download - IRF | International Road Federation

TRANS-NATIONAL HIGHWAYS AND NATIONAL PROGRAMMES
Developing Euro-Asian
Transport Links
Michalis P. Adamantiadis
Chief, Transport Facilitation & Economics
Section, Transport Division, United Nations
Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)
from the countries concerned identified the main Euro-
Asian road and rail routes to be considered for priority
development as well as the main transhipment points and
ports along them
Globalisation has led to significant increases in trade and
transport between Asia and Europe. Most of the cargo
traffic has chosen increasingly congested - but still the
least costly - maritime routes, pointing to the need to
further develop and promote inland Euro-Asian transport
links. These routes, once established, could provide
credible and competitive transport options for traders
and shippers. They could also become an effective tool
for stimulating economic development and integration of
the Euro-Asian region, including landlocked countries of
Central Asia.
But, for historical and economic reasons, transport links
in many countries along the traditional Silk Road are
insufficiently developed. The persistence of non-physical
bottlenecks, such as cumbersome, costly and timeconsuming
border crossing procedures, excessive
documentation requirements, unofficial payments, and
unexpected closures of borders, together with
inadequate transport infrastructure, discourage transport
1
operators from using Euro-Asian inland transport routes.
The UNECE started in 1995 to address this issue. In 2000
and 2002 the UNECE road and rail infrastructure
agreements were extended, to incorporate the Caucasus
and Central Asian links. It also developed, together with
ESCAP, a common strategic vision for the development of
Euro-Asian links.
The greatest progress has been achieved since 2003,
when UNECE and UNESCAP began to promote
cooperation among the countries directly concerned. All
East-European ECE countries that were not EU members
at that time, Caucasus and Central Asian member
countries, and other interested ESCAP members,
including China, were invited to participate.
In four Expert Group meetings (from 2003 to 2007)
organized under Phase I of the Euro-Asian Transport
Linkages (EATL) Project, Government representatives
In this project, 230 investment opportunities worth USD
43 billion, have been evaluated and prioritized, using a
methodology similar to that of the Trans-European
Motorway (TEM) and Trans-European Railway (TER)
Projects' Master Plan. Around half the projects have
secured financing and are likely to be implemented in the
medium term.
Non-physical obstacles, which constitute a major barrier
to Euro-Asian transport, have also been addressed in the
context of this project. Capacity-building workshops on
the facilitation of international transport along Euro-Asian
transport links were organized in Azerbaijan, Belarus,
Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Ukraine.
The first phase of the United Nations EATL project
culminated in February 2008 with the ministerial meeting
in Geneva. During that meeting, transport ministers and
IRF BULLETIN SPECIAL EDITION : ASIA & OCEANIA
06