A new report has suggested that the EU’s plan to build and upgrade major roads, railways ports, and airports is well behind on its 2030 targets, undermining trade opportunities and the decarbonisation of European transport.
According to EuroNews, key transport projects intended to increase connectivity of people and goods across the European Union by 2030 are well behind schedule despite the €15.3 billion invested from EU funds since 2020, the latest report from the European Court of Auditors (ECA) published on Monday reveals
The bloc’s legislation designed to improve transport networks, the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), was adopted in 2013, but suffered major setbacks first from the COVID pandemic and then Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which led to a massive surge in energy and construction prices.
The EU auditors write that the eight megaprojects previously assessed in 2020 and again in the latest report had experienced an overall real cost increase of 47% against original estimates.
Data from 2025 shows that costs have increased further to more than 82%, with two of the audited projects contributing most to the drastic cost gap: Rail Baltica, intended to integrate the Baltic states in the European rail network, and the Lyon-Turin rail link, intended to link the Italian and French high-speed rail networks.
The EU executive’s oversight of the completion of the core network corridors by the member states “remained distant”, the auditors’ report says, arguing that the Commission should have been more proactive in light of a 2020 ECA report that flagged major delays, cost increases, and weaknesses in the Commission’s supervision.
“We also provided the Commission with a set of recommendations aimed at improving the financial management of the EU co-funding going to megaprojects,” reads the ECA report.
Failure to deliver TEN-T badly undermines the EU’s 2030 targets since transport is central to Europe’s economy and climate goals. Delayed rail, waterways, and clean infrastructure keep emissions high, threatening the bloc’s aim to achieve climate neutrality by 2050.
Moreover, fragmented and inefficient transport will inevitably lead to higher costs for businesses and consumers and reduce trade opportunities across the EU.
Even though the upward trend has slowed down in recent years, EU auditors say, construction costs of the Canal Seine Nord Europe have tripled in total since the project began.
“EU transport flagship infrastructures are supposed to reshape Europe, bringing people closer together and facilitating economic activity”, said Annemie Turtelboom, the ECA member leading the report.
“But three decades after most of them were designed, we are still a long way from cutting the ribbon on these projects, and a long way from achieving the intended improvements in passenger and freight flows across Europe.”
(Picture: Yay Images)
