Czech Business Today

In October 2011, the European Commission published a proposal for the Connecting Europe Facility (“CEF”) to financially support the European transport, energy and digital network in the period 2014-2020. 

CEF, with €50 billion budget (of which €10 billion will be earmarked from the Cohesion Fund to transport infrastructure) will be centrally administered by the European Commission. For the Czech Republic it is crucial to ensure that the re-allocation of money from the Cohesion Fund will not happen at the expense of the new Member States and the money earmarked for cohesion policy would not end in the infrastructure projects of old Member States. 

At the debate in the European House in Prague on 21st November, the majority of participants agreed that the partial solution is a high quality of submitted projects to be co-financed by CEF and maximum effective use of the Structural Funds by the Czech Republic in the future programming period. “Road infrastructure is difficult to finance outside State budgets. Czech government should try to influence the final list of projects co-financed by CEF during the negotiations about its final version,” said Jan Michal, Head of the EC Delegation in the Czech Republic. “However, many unknown aspects of CEF remain – the method and criteria for selection procedure of projects and the definition of European added value,” said Director for Strategy of Ministry of Transport CZ Luděk Sosna. 

Therefore, it is crucial for the Czech Republic to maximize co-financing from Structural Funds. The question remains whether the CR will be able to cofinance the projects. The cohesion policy is co-financed from national sources of min. 15%, whereas the CEF need approx. 60-80%. 

Petr Kašík, Director of the Transport Union CZ warned that the CEF funding for the transport projects is insufficient for the whole EU. 

Jaromir Kohlíček, MEP said that current plans for European transport infrastructure are 30 times greater than the available resources. “The money from the CEF can only be granted to those who will be well-prepared,” he added. In the digital area, the CR sets its national targets for the digital networks in the strategy Digital Czech Republic, informed Jan Sochorek, attaché for digital agenda and telecommunication of Czech Permanent Representation to the EU. 

Tomáš Veselý, Head of International Cooperation ČEPS, a.s. said ČEPS had identified 19 energy projects of the “common interest”. “The question is whether the new proposal for Infrastructure legislation will lead to improving the authorization procedure, when it should be primarily applied to projects of the “common interest”, rather to the construction of the linear structures as a whole” he added.