The Trans-European Corridors: Piecemal Extension of the Existing Ones, or the Development of a Pan-European Network?

Fleischer, Tamás (2008) The Trans-European Corridors: Piecemal Extension of the Existing Ones, or the Development of a Pan-European Network? In: The European Union, the Balkan Region and Hungary. Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, 2 (28). Europa Institut - Social Research Center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, pp. 137-152. ISBN 978 963 06 5236 0

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Abstract

The European Union evolved an overlapping Trans-European network on the basis of the transport network of its 12 (15) countries in the late 1980s, next, in 1992, it was fixed (TEN) in the transport policy and Basic Treaty of the Union. Since that time the entire network has been pushed into the background in the documentations, and there is mostly talk about the building of 14 projects (1996), and 30 (2004) projects after the expansion of the list. The PEN (Pan-European Network) tried to cover the eastern part of Europe by extending the east-west corridors of the TEN (1994, 1997). The TINA process valid for the territory of the acceding countries of the first major eastern enlargement retained the PEN network, but it made possible the inclusion of secondary corridors and increasing the density of corridors (1995–1999). The TIRS process involving the seven Balkan countries regarded the PEN and TINA corridors as starting points, and supplemented the latter ones towards five more countries (2002). The REBIS has once again surveyed the latter five countries and though it did not revise the results of earlier processes, reconsidered each of the elements of the TIRS supplementary networks involving the five countries and made recommendations for the comprehensive transport networks of the REBIS space (2003). The project-oriented approach dominates in the entire process, including the changes of the TEN-network of the Fifteen from the early 1990s on, and the network is almost exclusively influenced by the financing possibilities of the elemental projects. The revision of the TEN network missed to consider the actual function and continental structure of an overlapping network in the context of the enlarged Europe. As a consequence advices extending over the spaces of enlargement do not help recognise the need for thinking in the framework of the functional role of the overlapping network. Instead the former structures are preserved (strengthened) that have developed within the national borders, or are further fragmented because of new borders, 11 and there is no way for the emergence of a structure of European scale even in places where the networks are being built now. As a consequence, and because of the radial piecemeal mending of the TENstructure initially formed, the developing network further strengthens the dominance of more developed spaces instead of an open grill network that would promote equalisation on European scale.

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