Speeches

Lord Bradshaw – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Bradshaw on 2016-02-22.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how much money the EU provided, in the most recent year for which figures are available, for research, capital expenditure and revenue support for (1) the bus and coach industry, (2) railway passenger and freight-services, (3) the air industry, including runways, aircraft or equipment, (4) the shipping and ports industry, and (5) road schemes and the development of vehicle technology.

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon

The EU budget has a number of programmes aimed at supporting the development of transport which can be at a regional, national or trans-national level.

Given the complexity of the different mechanisms for delivering such funding the UK government does not maintain a central record of the total amount of money that the EU provides for research, capital expenditure and revenue support for transport.

The main source of funding for transport infrastructure comes from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) which promotes the development of the different Trans- European Networks for Transport, Energy and Communications. Transport is the major element of the CEF budget with nearly €1.5 billion in commitments allocated to fund EU transport projects in 2016. The EU transport funding priorities are defined in the TEN-T regulation (EU 2013/1315) and focus on improving cross-border connections and developing sustainable and efficient transport infrastructure. Funding is awarded to projects through a competitive bidding process with projects having to meet specific criteria and demonstrate high EU added value. The attached tables have details of projects involving UK participation that have been awarded funding.