On 29 September 2020, the Commission decided to allocate further €54 million to support five projects aimed at improving the safety and sustainability of the European rail transport. The new funds follow the €2.2 billion the Commission decided to allocate on 16 July 2020 for almost 140 key transport projects.

The projects have been selected via a competitive call for proposals launched on 15 November 2019, and will receive funding through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) in the form of grants. More particularly, four of them contribute to the deployment of infrastructure for alternative fuels and to the acquisition of environmentally-friendly buses by building new natural gas, electric and hydrogen buses in Barcelona (Spain) and Paris (France) as well as over 250 electric charging stations for road vehicles on the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) in Italy. The fifth project, instead, concerns the installation of the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) on 238 rail vehicles in Germany.

The selected projects need to be approved by Member States. Thereafter, the Commission will adopt the formal financing decisions, while the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) will sign the grant agreements with the beneficiaries at the latest by 18 March 2021.

Marco Stillo