EU funds 27 February 2020, 9:06am

Hungary asks extra funds from EU for huge railroad and port developments

Portfolio

The Hungarian government aims to win 75.5 billion forints worth of European Union funding in a recently published government decree that lists 11 rail, port and truck parking developments. The cabintet is asking the EU for a grant of HUF 60.5 billion for the first five.

According to the latest Official Gazette published on Wednesday, Hungary selected five projects to be submitted by the end of 26 February for the 2019 (!) call and listed other development projects that also seek CEF funding.

The first two of the five "urgent" projects are major rail developments, and the rest is the development of several ports and truck parking lots. Hungary is applying for HUF 60.5 billion CEF funding for these projects:

The net cost of the project for the development of the interoperability of the Kelenföld–Hegyeshalom railway is HUF 23.25 bn, of which HUF 19.76 bn is planned be provided by the CEF;
Preparations for the modernisation of select rail sections between Budapest and the Ukrainian border has a net budget of HUF 27.3 bn, HUF 23.2 bn of which should be covered by the CEF;
The fourh project containing several port developments aims to win HUF 16,.32 bn worth of CEF funding for a total budget of HUF 19.2 bn.

The cabinet approved six other projects, including the development of truck parking on motorways, requesting HUF 15 bn worth of CEF funding for these (in tenders in 2020).

The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) is a key EU funding instrument to promote growth, jobs and competitiveness through targeted infrastructure investment at European level. It supports the development of high performing, sustainable and efficiently interconnected trans-European networks in the fields of transport, energy and digital services. CEF investments fill the missing links in Europe's energy, transport and digital backbone. Member states can apply for grants annually and the winning projects are selected in Brussels.

Since January 2014, the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) is the gateway to funding under the CEF. INEA implements most of the CEF programme budget, in total EUR 28.7 billion out of EUR 30.4 billion (EUR 23.7 billion for Transport, EUR 4.7 billion for Energy, and EUR 0.5 billion for Telecom).

TheConnecting Europe Facility (CEF) for Transport is the funding instrument to realise European transport infrastructure policy. It aims at supporting investments in building new transport infrastructure in Europe or rehabilitating and upgrading the existing one. The total budget for CEF Transport is EUR 24.05 billion for the the period 2014-2020. INEA is responsible for implementing EUR 23.7 bn of the CEF Transport budget in the forms of grants during the same period.

Cover photo by MTVA/on commission by Csaba Jászai

This article is part of the work programme titled "The impacts of EU cohesion policy in Hungary - Present and Future" which is carried out by Net Média Zrt., the publisher of Portfolio.hu, between 1st April 2019 and 31st March 2020 with European Union financing. The views in this article solely reflect the opinions of the author. The European Commission as the funding entity does not take any responsibility for the use of information presented in this article.