The European Commission has agreed to invest a total of €4 billion across 25 large infrastructure projects in 10 Member States.
The investment package, which will fund projects in the fields of energy, transport, healthcare, environment, research and connectivity, will be augmented with matching funding from recipient Member States; bringing the total investment in all projects to €8 billion. Investments from the EU will be distributed among the following projects:
- Bulgaria – €33 million will go towards the construction of a gas pipeline connecting Bulgaria and Greece;
- Czechia – €76 million will fund upgrades to the rail connection between Prague and Pilsen, while just under €75 million will help build a major road link between Czech and Slovak motorway networks;
- Germany – nearly €84 million will finance campus improvements at Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Thuringia, constructing a new data centre and a faculty building for the mathematics, IT and science departments;
- Greece – around €135 million is to be invested in the Syzefxis II public administration telecommunications system, connecting an additional 600,000 public servants to the network; while the island of Crete will receive €95 million to build an electric connection with the mainland;
- Hungary – the Budapest ring road will receive major structural upgrades, with a €105.5 million investment;
- Italy – over €358 million will go towards refurbishing the Circumetnea rail network on Sicily, including the building of eight new stations;
- Malta – just under €74 million will fund sanitation and water treatment projects in Malta and the surrounding regions, providing the country with better drinking water and improved water security;
- Poland – €117 million will go towards building a new children’s hospital facility in Poznań and furnishing the University Hospital of Kraków with new equipment, while a further €842 million will be invested in various maritime, rail and road transport operations;
- Portugal – nearly €119 million is to be invested in modernising rail infrastructure; and
- Romania – €1 billion will fund upgrades and expansions to a major ring road and €97 million will pay for improvements to the metro network in Bucharest; while almost €603 million will go towards environmental protection and maintenance along the Black Sea coastline and more than €135 million will be invested in clean drinking water projects.
Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Creţu said: “These 25 projects are as many examples of how the EU is working to improve everyday life for our citizens from better drinking water to faster rail transport and modern hospitals. In the current budget period, I have adopted 258 large infrastructure projects worth €32 billion of EU funds; they are, in a way, the ambassadors of Cohesion Policy and I’m proud of each and every one of them.”
