Activity Report of the European Commissioner for Transport
The European Commissioner for Transport, Adina Vălean, has presented the activity report of her 5-year term, which focused, among other things, on sustainable and intelligent transport, lower emissions and safe mobility
Sorin Iordan, 10.07.2024, 14:00
The European Commission has allocated 12 billion euros to Romania, in the last 5 years, for projects in the field of transport infrastructure, said the European Commissioner for Transport, Adina Vălean, on the occasion of the presentation of her five-year activity report. The representative of Romania in the Brussels Executive specified that more than 850 million euros were transferred through the European Interconnection Mechanism, which she managed directly, and the money was allocated to finance 26 major projects. According to her, Romania ranks 6th in the EU in terms of the allocation of funds, after Poland, Italy, France, Germany and the Czech Republic.
Also, Valeanu stressed that during her mandate Romania received a new transport corridor, which will ensure a more efficient connection of the northeastern area with the rest of the country’s regions. It’s the International North-South Transport Corridor, which unites the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea and which requires new transport standards, new urban hubs and a new speed of movement on the railway. As for the port of Constanta, the largest Romanian port on the Black Sea, which Vălean called “the heart of the corridors of solidarity” as a result of the essential role it plays in helping Ukraine, it benefited from 162 million euros from the European Union for improving the railway infrastructure. The EU Commissioner said that she wanted to see that the port of Constanța remain the gateway to the community space for goods from Asia, on the middle transport corridor, and that she brought up this topic in an international format at the G7 level.
The European official also said that the Fast Danube 2 project, which aims to improve navigation conditions on the common Romanian-Bulgarian sector of the Danube, is close to receiving European funding. Regarding the road transport industry in Romania, Adina Vălean said that this sector of the economy has a contribution of 6.5% to the Gross Domestic Product and that professional drivers have been declared essential workers for the economy of the European Union. At the same time, over 94 million euros from the European budget financed investments at the border crossing points between Romania, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, the commissioner also said.
As regards the situation of the national airline TAROM, created by some pilots who declared themselves unfit to fly on Monday, Vălean said that this caused inconvenience to the passengers as they should have been notified ahead of time to be able to plan their trips differently. She stressed that this situation does not bode well, in the context in which the air operator benefits from a state aid approved by the European Commission, an influx of funds that was made on the basis of a restructuring plan, with precise conditions. Adina Vălean pointed out that this summer will be difficult from the point of view of air transport, especially for the countries of South-Eastern Europe, against the background of the increase in air traffic and the volume of passengers, and that incidents like the one at TAROM do not help . Regardless of the situation, the commissioner concluded, passengers’ rights must be respected. (MI)
