Brussels is investing 62 million euros in Dutch infrastructure projects this year. These are eleven major projects involving Dutch parties. The projects will receive grants from the European ‘CEF Transport’ programme. EGEN was involved in two applications.
What is CEF Transport?
CEF Transport is the short name for a European grant programme (‘Connecting Europe Facility’) for transport. The aim of the programme is to create one cross-border main network for transport by land, water and air within the European Union. This month the results of the first application round were announced. EGEN was involved in the grant application of two of the awarded projects. A result of which we are proud. Both projects make an important contribution to making the European transport system sustainable, efficient and future-oriented, and to a stronger multimodal transport network in Europe.
Improved rail traffic flow Amersfoort
The first project concerns railways: rail manager ProRail received a grant of 8 million euros for making the railway bottleneck on the east side of Amersfoort future-proof. The planned modifications will greatly reduce the susceptibility of the rail infrastructure to malfunctions and ensure a more efficient flow of traffic on the track. This will ensure a faster and more reliable service for both freight and (international) passenger transport.
Rhombus plan: freight transport by water
The second major project concerns improving the transport of goods by water in Heijen, Venlo and Lanaken. The project received a grant of 10.4 million euros (intended for the Province of Limburg, the Municipality of Venlo and three Limburg ports). This gives substance to the first step of the ‘Rhombus Plan’. In this plan, a synchro-modal system will be realised between Antwerp, Liège, Venlo, Nijmegen and Rotterdam. The system consists of important inland waterway connections (including the Albert Canal, the Juliana Canal and the Meuse) and results in congestion reduction and a further modal shift towards water.
New subsidy openings CEF Transport
A new application round for the CEF Transport subsidy is currently underway in Brussels. More information is expected in or around September. Grant applications can already be submitted to another CEF section: the CEF Blending Facility. Finally, we are also working hard on a new tender for the DKTI subsidy (another important scheme for innovations in the transport sector).
