Does the practice respond to the rhetoric? : on the contribution of the contemporary EU investment policies in transport infrastructure to a sustainable future.

This paper examines whether the EU policy initiatives about investments in transport infrastructure (ITI) have actually contributed to promoting a European transport system that increases sustainable freight distribution and the mobility of people. Specifically, it assesses how far the modal distribution of the EU's financial contributions and national investments have enhanced the comparatively environment-friendly modes, rail and sea transport. Modal redistribution is vitally important for the achievement of sustainable transport. An environment-friendly scenario is unlikely to be achieved by technology alone. It also needs fundamental political decisions, valuations of priorities, and sharing issues about who gains and who loses in a given modal split. The EU has declared the development and modernisation of European transport infrastructure as a method of modifying the modal split to promote the sustainability scenario. Despite the need to modernise infrastructure, there has been a downward trend of total ITI in the EU during the last 25 years. It has not yet been possible to harmonise national transport policies with the EU policy targets. For example, the Greek policy continues to resist the need for modal integration and interoperability of rail and sea, and the EU has not yet been able to reverse this trend.