Decision No 1692/96/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council laid down Community guidelines for the trans-European transport network, identifying projects of common interest intended to contribute to the development of that network and, in Annex III, identifying the specific projects to which the European Council attached particular importance at its meetings in Essen in 1994 and in Dublin in 1996.

Growth in traffic, in particular due to the growing share of heavy goods vehicles, has resulted in increased congestion and bottlenecks on international transport corridors. In order to ensure international mobility of goods and passengers, it is therefore necessary to optimise the capacity of the trans-European transport network.

The Gothenburg European Council in 2001 invited the Community institutions to adopt revised guidelines for the trans-European transport network, with a view to giving priority, where appropriate, to infrastructure investment for railways, inland waterways, short sea shipping, intermodal operations and effective interconnections. In this framework, the contribution of inland waterways ports and regional airports to the objectives of the trans-European transport network should not be underestimated.

The forthcoming enlargement of the European Union and the objective of shifting the balance between transport modes and achieving an infrastructure network capable of meeting growing needs, together with the fact that it could take over ten years to complete some of the priority projects, call for re-examination of the list of projects in Annex III to Decision No 1692/96/EC.

Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, and Turkey have concluded association agreements and Europe agreements and have applied for membership of the European Union. The transport administrations of eleven of these countries have carried out, with the support of the Commission, a transport infrastructure needs assessment aimed at defining a network according to the same principles as laid down in Decision No 1692/96/EC.

The Barcelona European Council in 2002 underlined the objective of reducing bottlenecks in regions such as the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Baltic Sea.

The Brussels European Council in December 2003 stressed that the priority projects identified in the guidelines are crucial to the strengthening of Internal Market cohesion, especially in view of the forthcoming enlargement of the Union and of the need to remove bottlenecks and/or complete missing links for the movement of goods (transit) across natural or other barriers or across borders.

The second Pan-European Transport Conference in Crete in 1994 and the third Pan-European Transport Conference in Helsinki in 1997 identified ten pan-European transport corridors and four pan-European areas as priorities for cooperation between the European Community and the third countries concerned.

In its report submitted to the Commission on 30 June 2003, the High-Level Group on the trans-European transport network (hereinafter "the High-Level Group") identified a limited number of priority projects using a methodology based on criteria which include, in particular, their potential economic viability, the degree of commitment on the part of the Member States concerned to keeping to a timetable agreed in advance in the programming of projects, their impact on the mobility of goods and persons between Member States, and their impact on cohesion and sustainable development. The report also includes projects in the new Member States which will join the Union on 1 May 2004. The results of such cooperation should be taken into account.

Environmental protection requirements should be integrated into the definition and implementation of Community policy in the field of the trans-European networks in accordance with Article 6 of the Treaty. This entails the promotion as a priority of infrastructure for transport modes that cause less damage to the environment, namely rail transport, short sea shipping and inland waterways shipping.

It is necessary to implement the central objective of decoupling the negative effects of transport growth from growth in GDP, as the Commission proposed in its communication on a European Union strategy for sustainable development.

Environmental assessment pursuant to Directive 2001/42/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 June 2001 on the assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment will in the future be carried out for all plans and programmes leading to projects of common interest. Funding for transport infrastructure should also be conditional on compliance with the provisions of Community environmental legislation, in particular Council Directive 85/337/EEC of 27 June 1985 on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment and Council Directives 79/409/EEC of 2 April 1979 on the conservation of wild birds and 92/43/EEC of 21 May 1992 on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora.

The Commission White Paper on the European transport policy calls for an integrated approach combining, inter alia, measures to revitalise the rail sector, in particular for freight services, to promote inland waterway shipping and short sea shipping, to encourage greater complementarity between high speed rail and air transport and to promote the development of interoperable intelligent transport systems in order to ensure increased network efficiency and safety.

The efficiency of the common transport policy depends, inter alia, on the coherence of measures to revitalise the rail sector and to develop the rail infrastructure. Directive 2001/12/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 2001 amending Council Directive 91/440/EEC on the development of the Community's railways provides for a Trans-European Rail Freight Network open to international freight transport services after 2003. The lines of the trans-European Rail Freight Network should be considered as part of the rail network defined by the guidelines set out in Decision No 1692/96/EC so that they can benefit from investments and attract traffic from the road.

Within the general objective of ensuring the sustainable mobility of persons and goods, mechanisms should be put in place to support the development of motorways of the sea between Member States in order to reduce road congestion and/or improve access to peripheral and island regions and States. Establishment of such mechanisms, backed up, inter alia, by tendering procedures, should be transparent and geared to needs and should in no way prejudice the Community rules on competition or on public procurement.

Support for the development of the motorways of the sea should be seen as complementary to the provision of Community aid as an incentive to the development of short sea shipping operations under the Marco Polo Programme established by Regulation (EC) No 1382/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 July 2003 on the granting of Community financial assistance to improve the environmental performance of the freight transport system (Marco Polo Programme) and should be based on the same criteria. However, the granting of Community financial assistance under the two instruments should not be cumulative.

There is a need for declaring priority projects to be of European interest, for concentrating Community financing on such projects and for introducing mechanisms to encourage coordination between Member States in order to facilitate completion of the projects within the desired timetable.

In accordance with Article 154 of the Treaty, the trans-European network policy should help to strengthen economic and social cohesion within the Community. In order to achieve this objective, efforts should be made to maximise consistency between the Community guidelines for the trans-European transport network and the programming of the relevant financial instruments available at Community level.

A posteriori evaluation of the priority projects should facilitate future revisions of the guidelines and of the list of priority projects and should help improve the a priori evaluation methods practised by the Member States.

A situation in which national procedures for the assessment of the environmental and socio-economic impact of a project are carried out separately by Member States may prove to be inappropriate to the transnational dimension of projects declared to be of European interest. In order to resolve this, coordinated evaluation and public consultation procedures or transnational enquiry procedures covering the different Member States concerned and focusing on the socio-economic and environmental aspects should be developed, in addition to joint evaluation methods. These procedures should apply without prejudice to the obligations imposed by the Community legislation on environmental protection.

Closer coordination between the States involved in projects on the same route may be necessary to improve the return on investments and to make it easier to synchronise investments and to put together a funding package.

Cross-border sections should be identified by Member States on the basis of criteria to be defined by the Committee set up under Article 18(2) of Decision No 1692/96/EC. The existing references to cross-border sections of the priority projects included in Annex III to that Decision should not prejudge the definition of cross-border sections according to these criteria.

The Commission has conducted an analysis of the impact of the recommendations made by the High-Level Group. The results show that carrying out the projects identified by the Group, combined with several of the measures under the Common Transport Policy, such as charging for the use of infrastructure and opening up rail freight to competition, would produce significant benefits in terms of time savings, lower emissions and less congestion, better access to peripheral Member States and to the new Member States, and greater general well-being.

In order to comply with the objectives of the trans-European transport network and to meet the transport challenges of enlargement, a considerable increase in appropriations for the trans-European networks is needed.

The Commission might decide to propose to the European Parliament and the Council that it is necessary to take forward projects other than those included in Annex III of Decision No 1692/96/EC in order to pursue objectives to boost growth, to better integrate an enlarged Europe and to improve the productivity and competitiveness of European business on global markets, as well as to contribute to the objective of economic, social and territorial cohesion and to intermodality. These projects should be given appropriate priority within the context of Community financing instruments.

Decision No 1692/96/EC should therefore be amended accordingly,