BREXIT & The North Sea Mediterranean Corridor Work Plan

  • By MDS Transmodal
  • •
  • 11 Dec, 2018

After two years work, the European Coordinator of the North Sea Mediterranean Corridor has published his 3rd Work Plan for the European Union’s Core Network Corridor.  As the only one of nine CNCs that includes the UK, he expressed his view on the future of the United Kingdom within the corridor after 29 March 2019.

The North Sea Mediterranean Core Network Corridor (CNC) is a multimodal transport corridor that stretches from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast in the north to Cork in the west, Paris and Lille in the centre, Marseilles in the south, and extends northeast through Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands towards Amsterdam. The objective of CNC is to facilitate the coordinated implementation of the core network by bringing together public and private resources and concentrate EU support from the CEF, particularly to:

·        Remove bottlenecks;

·        Build missing cross-border connections; and

·        Promote modal integration and interoperability.

Professor Balazs’ 3rd Work Plan provides the results of analysis of the corridor in terms of the extent of compliance with the technical parameters of the TEN-T Guidelines and progress in the development of the corridor towards these objectives.    It also describes the main future challenges and provides recommendations for its future development.  Up to April 2018 the European Union has provided €1.8 billion of Connecting Europe Funding to 85 projects located on the corridor.

On the subject of Brexit, Professor Balazs writes, “Naturally, as this is the only TEN-T Corridor to include the UK, there is a great deal of interest in the outcome of Brexit. Negotiations between the UK and the EU are making progress, but whatever the final outcome, there will be a continuing need for efficient transport networks and strong trading links between the UK and her neighbours, and therefore a continuing need to maintain the integrity of the transport corridor, and to bring truly efficient and sustainable transport connections between Ireland and the European continental mainland”.

https://ec.europa.eu/transport/sites/transport/files/3rd_workplan_nsm.pdf