Cohesion policy and transportation

Abstract

[Abstract] This chapter discusses infrastructural investment policy in the European Union (EU), both under the rubric of Cohesion policy and under that of EU transportation policy and, in particular, of investment in Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) infrastructure. Investment projects in transportation and public infrastructure (telecommunications, energy, water, sanitation, and so on) play an important role in European regional development policy, so much so that they have been mostly financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Cohesion Fund (CF). Unfortunately, there is no conventional wisdom regarding transport infrastructure and regional development, nor is there a clear theory to ascertain how much infrastructure helps a region’s development chances. The focus of this chapter is therefore on the main conceptual tools for designing and evaluating, usually on a region-by-region basis, the right mix of infrastructure and other development goals in the current state of regional development theory and policy in the EU.