Governance of Transport Corridors in OIC Member States:
Challenges, Cases and Policy Lessons
33
Although the members of the EU formally agreed upon ‘the adoption of a common policy in the sphere
of transport’ (Treaty of Rome, 1957), it wasn’t until the 1980s that support for a European-wide
transport policy started to gain traction and talks towards developing specific policy began. In 1992,
the by then 12 member states signed the development of a common transport policy in the Treaty of
Maastricht. In the beginning, two processes ran parallel to each other: the definition of a European-
wide network and the identification of priority projects. In 1994, 14 priority projects were defined and
in 1996 the first TEN-T guidelines were formulated. These guidelines contain a specification of the
objectives set out in the Treaty of Maastricht.
In the years after, the objectives of TEN-T slightly changed to fit the needs of the common transport
system. Studies conducted regularly by the European Union in the form of the so-called white- and
green papers evaluate current experiences and keep track of future developments with regards to
status of transport within Europe and contributed to readjusting and fine-tuning EU’s transport policy.
Topics were discussed such as simplifying border procedures, promoting rail, sea and inland water
transport to relieve road and air transport, emphasizing importance of environmental and social
standards in transport and harmonizing charging principles of transport services.
In the aftermath of the enlargement of the EU from 14 to 24 states in 2004, a large policy revision
process began in 2008. The main conclusion of the evaluation was that the member states mostly
developed national projects, with little cooperation among member states, resulting in TEN-T being
mostly a patch of projects rather than a coherent European project, with little infrastructure projects
crossing the border (Aparicio, 2017; Marshall, 2014). The result became visible in 2013 when new
TEN-T guidelines came into force. While new guidelines had been adjusted before in 2004 and 2010,
2013 marks a new phase of integration with a heavier focus on cross-border cooperation.
In the 2000s, the government structure changed as the EU took the first step from being a mere funder
of projects towards taking an active role in monitoring its implementation. A new executive agency
was established in 2006, the TEN-T Executive Agency, which has as its goal to handle the technical and
financial management of the TEN-T program on behalf of the EU. In 2014, the agency was renamed the
Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA). During the same year, the monitoring system
TENtec was established. This system is responsible for “the collation of technical, geographical and
financial data to be used to inform policy-making and political decision-making processes related to
TEN-T and its associated funding program”11, as well as providing technical support to INEA.
The new guidelines promised a more integrated approach, with a heavier focus on multimodal
transport and cross-border cooperation. To ensure more integration, the priority projects, in the
meantime grown to 30, were redefined into nine corridors, with a dedicated corridor coordinator
appointed to each of them. At the same time, less emphasis was given to the European-wide network,
which is now known as the comprehensive network, and to which, with an expected completion time
of 2050, less priority is given.
Alongside to the nine corridors, two ‘Horizontal Priorities’ are developed, the European Railway Traffic
Management System (ERTMS) deployment and Motorways of the Sea (see boxes below)12; both
established to carry forward the implementation of the objectives of the Core Network. A European
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