Towards a climate neutral EU:
efficient allocation of EU funds

Mistake to avoid: mix up road and cycling infrastructure projects

Organisation: Umanotera Website: www.umanotera.org Added: September 02, 2022
Project start date: January 01, 2018
Project end date: December 31, 2022

Narrative

Road and cycling infrastructure are often strongly connected, especially when cycling paths are not physically seperated from roads. In these cases it is important to clearly separate investments into cycling infrastructure and safety from investments into road renewal and expansion in order to avoid the greenwashing of EU funds. One illustrative example for such combined investment comes from the municipality of Litija in Slovenia, where a local road was renewed and also widened in some parts. Then bike lanes were drawn on the road. While the bulk of the financing went into road infrastructure, the overall investment was labelled "Arrangement of the cycling path from the town Litija to the settlement Pogonik". The investment was entirely placed in the priority area "Sustainable energy use" with the code of intervention "Cycle tracks and footpaths", which - considering the nature of the investment - is misleading.


Financial data

For the example mentioned above: EUR 1.2 million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) of an overall investment of ca. EUR 3 million


Recommendations

Actual invesments in sustainable modes of transport are needed for the sustainable mobility transition, rather than investments into conventional infrastructure that only carry a green label. In order to avoid greenwashing of EU funds a stricter regulation and monitoring of the labelling and categorization of (mixed) cycling and road infrastructure projects is needed.


Information sources

Public tender

Other info

https://www.gov.si/novice/2021-01-13-evropska-sredstva-za-kolesarsko-pot-od-litije-do-naselja-pogonik/

European Climate Initiative (EUKI)
This project is part of the European Climate Initiative (EUKI). EUKI is a project financing instrument by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK). The EUKI competition for project ideas is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. It is the overarching goal of the EUKI to foster climate cooperation within the European Union (EU) in order to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.