The European Parliament adopted a resolution based on the own-initiative report drawn up by Margarita STARKEVICIUTE (ADLE, LT), and welcomed the close and constructive cooperation between the Commission and the Court of Auditors on the programme for a TEN-T. Parliament regretted the meagre increase in the appropriations available for TEN-T, and was concerned about the slow speed of implementation of the priority TEN-T projects. The new 2007-2013 financial framework would have a considerable impact on the TEN-T, as the amount agreed upon was approximately 40% of that contained in the original Commission proposal of 14 July 2004. The latter had proposed an amount of EUR 20 350 million for TEN-T for the period 2007 to 2013, whereas the financial framework made only EUR 8 013 million available. Parliament believed that, as a consequence, selecting, prioritising and ensuring efficient implementation of the projects would become even more important. In the current financial environment, preference should be given to cross-border sections of priority projects with high Community added-value and to certain major "bottlenecks" in order to contribute significantly to the completion of a trans-European, interconnected and interoperable transport network. In this context, Parliament welcomed the cooperation agreement with the European Investment Bank (EIB).

Parliament was also of the opinion that the Commission had further to improve cooperation with Member States when priority projects at national and EU level were selected. It was important for projects which were not completed on schedule to be subject to more stringent checks, with a possibility for subsidies under the multi-annual indicative programme to be transferred to projects which are progressing more rapidly.

Parliament called on the Member States to develop an integrated transport network policy to ensure the proper functioning of the trans-European transport network and the efficiency of national networks and to support a European added-value approach rather than fighting for the principle of "fair share".

Urging the Commission to establish a clear and transparent division of institutional responsibilities, Parliament wanted it to define a framework for the coordination of activities between DG REGIO and DG TREN with a view to avoiding double-financing of the same projects. It was good practice to have clear agreements in place between the Member States and the Commission on the separation of funding from different EU sources. Parliament advocated a single entity for managing projects by focusing on the main activity, in the process maintaining centralised information, facilitating better monitoring by the Commission and improving the coordination of the different legal, administrative and technical issues between the Member States involved. Such a single entity responsible for managing projects could reduce the risk of double funding.

Noting that payments from the Commission have taken excessive time to reach the final beneficiary, Parliament called therefore for money to be paid out swiftly and efficiently. In this context, a direct payment flow from the Commission to the beneficiary could be a better solution.

Lastly, Parliament considered the coordination of TEN-T projects to be essential, particularly in the case of cross-border projects. It hoped that the establishment of the TEN-T Executive Agency, which had now been announced by the Commission, might contribute to the implementation of the TEN-T projects.

The Council adopted conclusions in which it welcomes the Special Report No 6/2005 on the efficiency and the effectiveness of the Commission's management system of the Trans-European Network for Transport (TEN-T). It considers that these special reports by the Court of Auditors are an invaluable tool for assessing the efficiency and the effectiveness of the management of EU expenditure programmes, and contribute to improving the quality of EU expenditure overall. However, the Council notes with concern that the execution of the 14 TEN-T priority projects is behind schedule and only 8 out of the 14 will be completed by the initial deadline of 2010. It takes note of the Court's finding that, in particular, cross-border sections are facing delays as these sections receive less priority at national level and may require greater coordination efforts from the Member States concerned.

The Council supports the Court’s recommendation that the Commission should:

- amend and complete key aspects of its model financing decision, in particular by defining more clearly the scope of the activities to be co-financed under studies on the one hand and works on the other;

- develop a consistent and coherent TEN-T evaluation methodology and documents it in a publicly available manual;

- reduce the number of different application and evaluation forms, and revise their content so that all relevant evaluation and selection criteria required by the legislator are covered;

- strengthen the monitoring of projects by defining minimum standards for project status reporting and

performing on-site project inspections and ex-post impact assessments more frequently, so that lessons can be learnt on how to implement TEN-T more efficiently and on how to optimise the effectiveness of the Community funding in this area;

- establish, where necessary in cooperation with the Member States, appropriate legal bases, procedures and tools to improve the internal coordination of transport infrastructure funding in order to identify potential cases of over- or double funding.