The European Commission has today appointed Pat Cox, Péter Balázs and Gilles Savary as new European coordinators for the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T).

• Pat Cox, former president of the European Parliament, will take over the coordination of Priority Project 1 (Berlin–Palermo) from the late Karel Van Miert;
• Péter Balázs, former Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, returns to Priority Project 17 (Paris–Bratislava), the project he actively coordinated from July 2005 until April 2009;
• Gilles Savary, former prominent member of the Parliament's transport committee, will be responsible for Priority Project 22 (Athens–Nuremberg/Dresden).

The new mandates will come into effect as of today and will end on 22 July 2013, together with the mandates of the existing coordinators. With the appointment of three new coordinators, a total of nine Coordinators will be active on eleven priority projects.

Vice-President Kallas added: "The results of the work of the coordinators has been to the full satisfaction of the Member States, the Parliament, the Commission and other stakeholders. It will encourage us to continue working on these projects in order to ensure an efficient implementation of our TEN-T policy."

More information on TEN-T Priority Projects.

He concluded by issuing a creative challenge to transport stakeholders: come up with an integrated, multimodal European travel planner. It would smooth the journeys made every day by millions of people and tonnes of cargo.

Some excerpts from his speech to the International Transport Forum:

• "The recent closures of European airspace show us: all transport modes should be interlinked, as part of one integrated system. The ash crisis led to more than 100,000 cancelled flights and more than 10 million passengers unable to travel. We do not want to face this situation again. In the event of major disruptions of one mode of transport, other modes should be able to assist"

• "Transport is an essential backbone of our economies and, indeed, of our society. My view of the European transport system of tomorrow is one that is highly integrated, efficient, cross-modal, resilient and low-carbon"

• "Innovation is not only about technology. It has also a soft side. Caring for one's passengers, clients, employees and their needs helps in identifying innovative solutions and new business opportunities. Service orientation is a must"

• "Interoperability and shared standards and approaches are essential – in all necessary freedom to compete and develop and fine tune sector-specific or regional solutions. Let compatibility be built in to sustain innovation. We are ready to deliver our bit at European level"

• "Europe has a role to play here, "not by taking everything into our own hands, but by supporting the right framework conditions – the policy priorities, legal certainty, possibly the choice of generic ITS components to be shared or re-used, and agreement on a clear timetable"

Read the entire speech here: http://bit.ly/9YFvLq

Belgian MEP Saïd El Khadraoui, who sits on the European Parliament’s Transport Committee, tells the ETF that there are many paths for Europe in its quest for a sustainable transport system.

He says he became involved in transport issues because of its vast reach. “It is about almost everything,” he says. “It is about the economy, sustainability, workers conditions, passenger rights – so many elements and components – and that makes it interesting and exciting.”

As the transport coordinator for the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) in the European Parliament, the 34-year-old Khadraoui plays a key role in all transport related issues at the European level. He expects 2010 will be a major year for transport: the European Commission will release its Transport White Paper, and transport will be at the heart of ongoing discussions on climate change, social issues, workers’ and passenger rights.

And he is clear about the most important transport challenge facing Europe: creating a sustainable transport system. “This should be a low carbon transport system,” he says. “There is no single, wonder solution. We need to combine different ideas, including investing in research and development to create better, less polluting engines. We also need regulations to set up limits for cars, light vehicles and trucks with the Euro-norms.”

El Khadraoui underlines that more sustainable vehicles lower the costs – and he wants the European Union to play a bigger role in this area. But overall, he says the EU needs a more efficient multimodal platform. This is not an easy task, he admits. “You need a vision, policy and resources, both at European and national level,” he says. “There are existing programs like Marco Polo, which funds projects shifting freight transport from the road to sea, rail and inland waterways, but they are too bureaucratic.”

While he aims to reduce road transport, El Khadraoui recognizes that all modes will be necessary and, for example, some goods will never be transported by rail. “It’s an issue of efficiency of sustainability to create these inter-modal platforms, where you can transfer goods from a truck to a ship and from a ship to a train and so on,” El Khadraoui says.“The market share of road transport is high, and the market will grow faster than the economy. At some point, we are either stuck in traffic, or we try to find solutions by investing in infrastructure. So we need to look at how to combine transport modes to create sustainable mobility, with issues like inter-modality: the EU should invest cleverly in multi-modal platforms".

"It is a combination of all kinds of measures.”

Saïd El Khadraoui, Member of European Parliament