The physical completion of the EU’s single market: trans-European networks as experimentalist governance?

ABSTRACT

Since the 1993 White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment, the Commission has emphasised the importance of trans-European networks (TENs) for the physical completion of the single market. Despite the 2004 and 2013 revisions to the TEN-T regulation, redefining and expanding the multimodal network, many projects remain unfinished. This article explores the Commission’s enduring role in EU policy coordination from the perspective of hybrid governance, focusing on the mediating role of high-level ‘European Coordinators’, the use of stakeholders forums, recourse to policy evaluation, and the development of new financial instruments. Drawing on recent audit and evaluations work by the EU institutions, it explores reconfigurations of implementing actors, and engages with notions from the literature on experimentalist governance, including networks, informalism and deliberation. The analysis suggests that the Commission demonstrates resilience as a coordination body in its commitment to ‘physically complete’ the single market, while recognising limitations to its coordination capacity.

KEYWORDS:

• European Commission
• trans-European networks (TENs)
• transport policy
• experimentalist governance
• EU agencies
• policy coordination

1. Introduction

The European single market has been a flagship achievement of the European integration process, seeking to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital across the Union (Egan 1998; Howarth and Sadeh 2010; Egan and Guimarães 2017). The free movement of people, goods and services is largely dependent not only on the provision of transport services for passenger and freight, but also the provision of transport infrastructure. Spendzharova and Raudla (2022) argue that to extend the scope and pace of single market integration, the EU has targeted new policy frontiers, such as energy and defence, where the member states have traditionally preferred national rather than cross-border markets (Camisão and Guimarães 2017; Genschel and Jachtenfuchs 2018).

In the rhetoric of the Single Market (SM) programme, creating a level playing field’ meant taking policy action on issues that threatened to place member states at a competitive disadvantage (see Mertens and Thiemann 2022). Structural interventions, by way of massive infrastructure investment, could help remove physical barriers such as ‘bottlenecks’ and ‘missing links’ that impeded market access. In the White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment, the Commission (1993) emphasised the importance of trans-European networks (TENs) for the internal market, and job creation through infrastructure construction, acknowledging its multiplier effect. The 1994 European Councils approved 14 large-scale priority projects for transport, which led to a first decision on guidelines to develop trans-European networks in transport (European Parliament and Council 1996). Essentially this amounted to a collective ‘shopping list’ of missing links still to be built, rather than a master plan for a pan-European network born out of technocratic planning. To accommodate EU enlargement, the priority projects were subsequently expanded to 30 (European Parliament and Council 2004) and later amalgamated into 10 strategic ‘corridors’ as part of a second revision to the trans-European transport (TEN-T) regulation (European Parliament and Council 2013a, 2013b). With serious delays and financing problems on cross-border sections, the Commission had to look for innovative governance solutions to maintain policy momentum, and reiterate original member state commitments, but do so without sufficient legal instruments or adequate governance capacity.

This article explores policy coordination for trans-European networks (TENs) in the last 15 years. It applies experimentalist governance as a conceptual lens to examine the enduring role of the Commission in driving policy, questioning how it has promoted new governance arrangements and financial mechanisms to drive forward project implementation. It explores reconfigurations of actors and new bodies, including their hybrid, experimental and multi-level nature, and focuses, in particular, on the mediating role of ‘European coordinators’ and ‘forums’ as an informal means to socialise stakeholders and deliberate on policy and financing solutions.

The first hypothesis (H1) (see Spendzharova and Raudla 2022) is that the existence of an institutionalised coordination body in the hybrid multi-level governance architecture promotes resilience in or furthers EU single market integration. This is born out of recent studies of EU economic integration showing that the Commission is key to ensuring the integrity of the single market and promoting integration (Kudrna and Wasserfallen 2020; Nugent and Rhinard 2019). The analysis here emphasises its role and the various experimental means through which it has sought to mobilise and network diverse actors in the multi-level system. The second hypothesis (H2) that the presence of public and private interactions in the hybrid governance architecture promotes resilience in single market integration. The following analysis illustrates how the Commission has looked to private finance and capital markets as a means to finance large-scale infrastructures, also recognising its engagement with private actors from the rail sector during TENs policy coordination over several decades.

The following section provides context to trans-European networks policy and the Commission’s role as a coordinating actor. The third section explores notions of hybrid and experimentalist governance in the EU as a potential lens for analysing policy. The fourth section then analyses Commission coordination in the last 15 years of implementation, with a particular view to innovation and experiment, while the fifth section considers the limits of hybrid governance.

2. The Commission as an actor in coordinating Trans-European networks (TENs)

Metcalfe (1996) saw the Commission as an inherently ‘network organization’ implying its social, mobilizing nature. Moravcsik (1999) put forward a theory of informal entrepreneurship, examining resources, persuasion, and influence while Bauer and Becker (2006)asserted that the Commission’s strengths lie in problem definition rather than execution and delivery, describing it as a ‘deprived entrepreneur’, creative but anxious. He recognised its much-neglected post-decisional role as policy co-manager, introducing the term ‘implementation management capacity’. Trondal (2007, 962) questioned the Commission’s behavioural and organisational anatomy, seeing it as ‘torn between member state dominance and concern for the collective European good’ but at the same time ‘increasingly integrated, fused and meshed with national government systems through committees, networks and agencies.’ He highlighted how Commission committees were ‘important arenas where national and supranational decision-makers meet, interact, persuade, argue, bargain, adapt, learn and re-socialize’, even with transformative potential. Nugent and Rhinard (2016, 1200) found that in areas where the Commission’s powers are relatively weak vis-à-vis the member states (this would include trans-European networks), it has been behind an increase in ‘non-legislative policy measures and an accompanying increase in various forms of intergovernmental-based decision-making processes’. Most recently, Cini and Czulno (2022) have explored the Commission’s assertive role regarding competition law when promoting the digital single market.

Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-Ts) policy has been analysed with regard to the emergence of policy in the 1990s (Johnson and Turner 1997, 2007) and its financing (Turró 1999). Stephenson examined how large-scale transport infrastructures made the political agenda, pushed by the European Round Table of Industrialists in the late 1980s against the backdrop of a failed Common Transport Policy (2012b), and the Commission’s role in advancing policy (Stephenson 2010a), as well as how national governments report to their parliaments on relevant EU policy decisions (Stephenson 2009). We know a little about implementation problems: wavering political commitment in the member states, difficulties securing financing for cross-border sections, and the Commission’s related experiments with public–private partnerships (PPPs). Turner (2021) has recently revisited TENs to explore the continuing integration of Europe’s infrastructure network with transport alongside vital energy and information infrastructures.

What do we know about policy governance and coordination in the field? Stephenson (2010a)put forward a typology for sorting and examining its opportunistic, entrepreneurial, and persistent behaviour, while recognising the role of other supranational agents in creating conducive conditions for policy integration, including the intellectual and social role that epistemic communities have played in reinforcing the Commission’s strategy. Many of the Commission’s efforts have been dedicated to task consolidation during policy implementation. Coordinating policy means caretaking, co-managing, socialising and mobilising (Stephenson, 2010a. Trans-European networks is effectively a ‘social system’ of multiple actors and contradictory interests (Ollivier-Trigalo 2001) where the mobilisation of a dense network of academic and professional experts, technical institutions, universities, and think-tanks, resulting in social spillover. Throughout the 1990s, we see the emergence of an epistemic community with the Commission meeting industry at the Pan-European Transport Conferences, which convened national transport ministries, regional politicians, industrial federations, operators, manufacturers, and the construction industry. The Commission encouraged technical studies under the transport component of the RTD Framework Programmes. DG TREN (now MOVE) sponsored Trans-Talk, a thematic network devoted to trans-national transport policy, a series of ‘TEN-T days’ exploring policy futures, and project seminars to identify implementation problems and solutions, and ways to encourage private investment. In short, socialisation was crucial in the early years of policy coordination. The next section considers experimentalist governance as a potential lens for analysing, and perceiving of, more recent empirical developments in governance.

3. Experimentalist governance: networks, deliberation, informalism, hybrid governance

In their work on experimentalist governance (EG), Sabel and Zeitlin (2010) asserted that the EU is a functional novel polity whose regulatory successes are made possible because decision-making is in part deliberative – ‘actors’ initial preferences are transformed through discussion by the force of the better argument’, but furthermore, ‘deliberation in turn is said to depend on the socialization of the deliberators (civil servants, scientific experts, and representatives of interest groups) into epistemic committees’ (Sabel and Zeitlin 2010: 2). The consensus that results might be informal: either not directly anticipated or establishing ‘extra-legal workarounds to surmount institutional blockages in the EU’s constitutional design’ (Héritier 1999).

In solving coordination problems around EU policy, MLG blurs the distinction between centralized and decentralized decision-making by networking various types of decision makers (Sabel and Zeitlin 2010, 2; after several authors). What is referred to as ‘networked deliberative decision making’ – especially when informal among technical elites – can provide legitimacy and transform the decision-making architecture. In the case of policy monitoring and review of implementation experience, such decision-making can be performed through a variety of institutional devices operating in combination meanwhile a single mechanism can perform several governance functions, potentially ‘identifying areas where new forms of national or transnational capacity building are required, and/or contributing to the redefinition of common policy objectives’ (Sabel and Zeitlin 2010: 3) – these might include peer review, networked agencies, councils of regulators, open methods of coordination, etc.

Sabel and Zeitlin (2010) recognise informalism as an important feature of the EU, where, in the face of persistent difference across the member states, institutions and their practices become more mutually responsive. The ‘mutability’ of institutions and the lack of formal sanctions in some cases (including TENs) can create the impression of informalism. EU officials and member states often collaborate to draw up regulatory frameworks and evaluate them, the most successful arrangements often combine the advantages of decentralized local experience with those of centralized coordination. The authors refer to notions such as ‘politically expedient informalism’ and ‘dynamic accountability and peer review’. Sabel and Zeitlin (2010) identify two scope conditions for the emergence of experimental governance: strategic uncertainty and a polyarchic distribution of power. The authors understand hybridity as the coexistence of new and old forms of governance, recognising that novel governance institutions co-exist with older ones, out of which they emerge (Sabel and Zeitlin 2010, 16). Here we might consider the EU regulatory and executive agencies, born out of political resistance to an increase in the Commission’s size, where older organisations coordinate the decentralised activities of ‘lower-level’ units.

Experimentalist architecture is ‘malleable’, arising from traditional hierarchical forms but continuing to interact with them (Sabel and Zeitlin 2010: 16). Three features of such architecture are as follows: complementarity – entities are distinct from each other but mutually dependent; restorative – old and new coexist temporarily with certain features being subsumed (or dissolved); and transformative – old becomes new. Where has experimentalist governance been applied and how? In the energy sector, scholars have recognised high strategic uncertainty and technical complexity, as well as the ‘coordination deficits’ of traditional governance methods. Here, experimentalist techniques helped find workable solutions to revise short- and medium-term goals considering implementation experience (Eberlein 2010, 61–78). Where EU legislation provided a framework goal only, more guidance was often needed; non-hierarchical techniques that sought to maximise the inclusion of all stakeholders could be interpreted as a depoliticization strategy (ibid. 201. 65).

The main institutional sites for deliberation and consultation were forums – novel platforms for informal and open discussion chaired by the Commission, meeting twice a year to bring together national ministries, industry actors, regulators, network operators and consumers. Smaller and specialized working groups convened more frequently. The forum is thus described as ‘an informal body that would develop, in a deliberative fashion and outside of the (polarized) political arena, legally non-binding rules that would be broadly recognised as best practice’ (Sabel and Zeitlin 2010: 66). It performs three experimentalist governance functions: first, elaborating, in a deliberative fashion, a workable implementation plan; second, providing a mechanism to review and monitor progress; and third, enabling significant ‘recursive revisions’ of policy objectives and procedures (Sabel and Zeitlin 2010: 66–67).

Von Homeyer (2010, 121–150) explored EU environmental governance, where broad framework goals are complemented by locally devised implementation measures, information provision, and recursive procedures to encourage policy learning from experience. Such structures often operate ‘on the basis of long-time horizons of ten, twenty, or more years for implementation’, as is the case for TENs. In this regard, Eckert and Eberlein (2020) have also acknowledged the key role of private authority in tackling cross-border issues. On the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, De Schutter (2010, 261–296) explored the role of evaluation in experimentalist governance and its strategic value as a governance tool that explicitly considers difficulties in implementation. Rather than seeking to expose bad faith on the part of the member states, or undermine their credibility, evaluation can reveal possible misconceptions or obstacles within the legal instruments and, thus, has a reflexive potential to examine local policy settings and challenges faced on the ground (Sabel and Zeitlin 2010: 220). Moreover, evaluation findings can be used to adjust implementing tools, rules and resources, providing policy incentives through deliberation.

4. Analysis: The Commission as an ‘experimentalist’ in coordinating the TEN-T

Financial risk and member state recalcitrance have been obstacles to the completion of the TEN-T. The Commission ultimately has limited legal tools to enforce set EU priorities since TENs decisions contain obligations but do not come with sanctioning possibilities. However, the adoption of implementing acts for delayed Corridors now gives the Commission more oversight. (European Court of Auditors 2020, 5). The following analysis draws on key EU documents including reports by the European Commission, European Court of Auditors, and European Economic and Social Committee to identify a number of new instruments and governance arrangements since the first major revision of the TEN-T in 2004, and which take up these features of informalism, deliberation, and evaluation: the appointment of ‘European Coordinators’ and use of ‘forums’ (2005), the creation of an executive agency (European Parliament and Council 2007), the use of experimental funding tools (2013-) and the use of evaluation by other EU bodies (European Economic and Social Committee 2020).

4.1 Networks, informalism and deliberation: the Commission’s use of ‘European coordinators’ (ECs) and ‘Corridor Forums’ (2005)

Following the first major revision of TEN-T in 2004, and recognising delays in implementation, in 2005 the Commission appointed ‘European Coordinators’ (ECs) to take charge of key cross-border section. These high-profile, often senior, politicians, were to act as mediators and contact points with national decision-making authorities, transport operators and users, and civil society representatives. The incumbents included former Commissioners, MEPs, deputy prime ministers and high-profile national politicians such as Karel Van Miert, former Commissioner for Competition, and Commissioner for Transport and Consumer Protection (Berlin-Palermo rail link), Etienne Davignon, former Commissioner for the Internal Market, the Customs Union and Industrial Affairs (South-West Europe high-speed rail link), and Karel Vinck, businessman and member of the Board of Suez-Tractebel, Tessenderlo Group (European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS)). The Commission went on to push the concept of ‘corridors’ as a way of concentrating financial resources and bringing together multi-level public and private actors across the member states. In 2014, further key political figures such as Pat Cox, former President of the European Parliament (Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor) and Carlo Secchi, former Vice-President of Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (Atlantic rail corridor) were brought on board to promote the coordinated implementation of projects along 10 ‘multimodal corridors’.

Each ‘political’ EC was tasked with drawing up a work plan, updated on a regular basis to monitor progress made in implementing projects on their corridor. Today, the Commission and ECs use an information system to coordinate and support the policy (the ‘TENTec’ system). The EC’s role includes: analysing the core network corridors; preparing the (non-binding) work plan for their corridor; engaging with high-level decision-makers and local stakeholders to help implementation; seeking approval from the member states on the work plan; setting up and chairing Corridor Forum meetings; and publishing a two-yearly progress report on the development of the TEN-T (European Court of Auditors 2020: 40, para 61). At the end of a first 5-year mandate to 2009, the ECs presented Vice-President Tajani with their final report, each providing own perspectives and analyses, and putting forward recommendations. He stated:

I am grateful to the European coordinators […] I am not only satisfied with the progress that has been made but am also pleased that at the end of this first mandate the policy experiment, of using the skills and talents of experienced European political figures to act as negotiators, interlocutors and ambassadors on key TEN-T projects has proved successful [own emphasis].

The ECs also produced common position papers for Tajani, who noted their success in monitoring such complicated international cross-border projects: ‘Once again progress has been made on the projects thanks to their close personal involvement. This has been particularly important during the extremely difficult circumstances faced by the member states over the last year in the face of the world economic and financial crisis.’ In the follow-up report, Vice-president Sim Kallas referred to the strategic corridors ‘under the watchful eye of European coordinators’, noting how the Coordinator ‘stimulates and coordinates action along the respective corridor, supported by a consultative forum […] involving relevant stakeholders (Commission 2014, 9). The Commission equipped the Coordinators with technical studies, to be discussed in the member states and with the forum (Commission 2014, 9). As such, Coordinators acted as delegated agents promoting deliberation among policy networks. Early forums were one-day events in Brussels reserved for member state representative and serving as official kick-off events. Participants reviewed existing studies by contractors, agreed on the infrastructure belonging to the corridor, identified responsible persons at national/regional level and potential stakeholders present in the forum, notably infrastructure managers; and they agreed on timetables for drawing up work plans. Such meetings were crucial for coordination by creating ‘a harmonious and constructive cooperation atmosphere amongst Member States and Coordinators’ (Commission 2014, 9–10):

In order to gain acceptance and ownership of all stakeholders relevant for the corridor, the European Coordinators and their team strive to be as transparent as possible when developing the corridor work plan. Apart from informing about the corridor work on a dedicated page per corridor on the Commissions’ website and via press releases, the European Coordinators therefore look for direct (bilateral) exchanges with the stakeholders, either through missions to the countries belonging to the corridor or by taking part in thematic events. (own emphasis)

The ECs made various missions to the capitals along the corridor, seeking exchanges with transport ministries and preparing the ground for future ‘forums’. The ‘missions’ were partly accompanied by technical visits to projects along the corridors, helping to ensure that, at national level, the key stakeholders are ‘informed about the corridor process and not taken by surprise’ when the final work plan is submitted to the member states for approval (European Court of Auditors 2020: 10). In short, ECs play a clear diplomatic role, often on a personal and informal footing, providing planning foresight, and acting as intermediaries to manage member state expectations, actively engaging them in lower-level, technical decision-making. The forums are thus more informal, pluralistic and ‘hands-on’ than traditional committees, bringing in multi-level and private sector stakeholders.

4.2 Networks and hybrid governance: the Commission’s delegation to an executive agency (2007)

In the governance of TENs, we see an EU executive agency that, over time, has taken on a hybrid identity. Some 20 years ago, executive agencies were entrusted with tasks in the management of Community programmes (Council 2002). Intended as temporary constructs, the six agencies today are not independent, but effectively managed by the Commission with their annual activity reports annexed to those of the relevant Commission DG. The Parliament and Court of Auditors (ECA) played a crucial role in legitimising their creation though ECA subsequently criticised the Commission for its failure to present a satisfactory cost–benefit analysis for its establishment. In practice, the Commission’s existing TENs project evaluation and monitoring tasks were impeded by the excessive workload of Commission staff (European Court of Auditors 2005). Half of the then DG TREN’s budget was concerned with the trans-European networks projects, but only 5% of its staff worked in that area. Operational from 2007, the Trans-European Transport Network Executive Agency (TEN-T EA) was tasked with the technical and financial preparation, and monitoring, of projects managed by the Commission. DG MOVE elects the agency’s steering committee and determines the delegated tasks, but remains responsible for overall policy, programming, and evaluation.

The agency is a story of metamorphosis, evolving over 20 years with name changes and a broadening of his mandate (task expansion), though its leadership has remained consistent. Its initial mandate was extended to December 2015, with objectives and tasks redefined to take responsibility for the TEN-T budget linked to the 2007–2013 Financial Perspective. From 2009 the agency became fully responsible for managing all open TEN-T projects financed since 2000. With an expansion of its remit to include the technical and financial management of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) and parts of Horizon 2020, in 2013 it was rechristened as the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA), receiving delegated powers to promote internet connectivity in local communities (Commission 2018b). The agency reinvented itself again in February 2021 as the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) to support the EU Green Deal by overseeing the implementation of delegated programmes, including projects contributing to decarbonisation and sustainable growth (Commission (2021a). Three of its four departments deal with the implementation of EU programmes including Department B (Sustainable networks and investments) covering the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) (see section 4.4 below).

In short, we see a form of institutional spillover with more implementation tasks delegated to an agency, which over time, has broadened its mandate and acquired delegating powers to lower units in the member states. TEN-T policy has also become enmeshed in broader notions of networks, sustainability, and connectivity. The agency is thus hybrid in nature, and horizontally so, because it can no longer be seen in the traditional sense as the sole executive agent of DG MOVE, since its portfolio includes environment and IT, policy domains of other Commission DGs. Arguably, the agency is a governance outcome of single market integration, rather than an explanatory factor that causes policy integration, though this is not to underestimate the value of its work.

4.3 Networks and hybrid governance: the Commission’s development of experimental financing mechanisms (2013-)

As Mertens and Thiemann (2022) assert in their work on supranational investment policies, the EU works to mobilise funds and define sectoral investment targets for upgrading and new construction, in order to increase the resilience of economic integration. The approach to investing in the single market is dependent upon the workings of hybrid modes of governance, both multi-level and public-private. As the authors right claim – and as is the case for trans-European networks – this has given rise to ‘battle lines and coordination issues.’

Recognising the clear mismatch between policy ambitions and the financial instruments at its disposal, the Commission took a hybrid approach to financing early on, first, switching to Multi-Annual Indicative programming (1994–99) to create flexibility to support projects progressing well; second, converging financial programming between the Cohesion Fund, ERDF, PHARE and EIB/EIF instruments; third, lobbying to raise the ‘catalytic’ 10% role of EU financing for construction to maximum 30% for cross-border sections, though the ‘TEN-T budget’ itself was meagre; fourth, in the early 2000s, the Commission explored the potential of private–public partnerships (PPPs) but met with limited success (Stephenson 2010a, though Mario Monti (2010) later expressed renewed commitment (see Mertens and Thiemann 2022); and fifth, it worked with the EIB to create a priority lending facility to enable ‘TEN-T loans’. However, since the second revised regulation (Council and Parliament 2013a), we see three main innovations in financing, as discussed below.

First, following the approval of the Connecting Europe Facility (European Parliament and Council 2013a), the TEN-T executive agency managed a series of calls for proposals for infrastructure financing, making almost €12 billion available for projects under negotiation or being implemented, with priority given to missing cross-border links and bottlenecks, and projects deploying the ERTMS. The CEF comprised grants as under the old TEN-T budget lines but offered financial support through innovative instruments such as guarantees and project bonds, using the EU budget as a catalyst to leverage funding from the private sector. For 2014–2019, the majority of the 30 billion Euros in the CEF was to support new or upgraded infrastructure, of which 70% for transport Council (2017).

Second, we have seen the rapid emergence of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) Indeed, Mertens and Thiemann (2022), in their exploration of supranational investment policies, examine that way in which hybrid governance processes have been reconstructed around the Investment Plan for Europe (2015–2020), for which the key pillar has been EFSI, administered by the EIB. Aware of the limits of raising the EU budget and increasing taxation, and with the Structural Funds under strain post the 2004 and 2007 enlargement, the Commission needed other instruments to raise financing for the core network. EFSI aimed at mobilising finance to rival the Cohesion Policy in size, while all financial instruments taken together might even match the EU budget (Núñez Ferrer, Le Cahceux, and Benedetto et al. 2016). This would give the Commission the capacity ‘to speak with authority about the economy or to draw upon accredited economic expertise is an important source of political advantage (Rosamond 2020, 1).

EFSI legislation emerged in just a year (European Parliament, 2015), soon followed by regulatory amendments and a second regulation (Commission 2018c; Amerkamp and Stephenson 2019). EFSI initially provided for encouraging results (Rinaldi and Núñez Ferrer 2017) but scholars have questioned its throughput legitimacy, given that the EU committed much more public money to guarantee a higher level of credit at €500bn, but without a full evaluation as to EFSI’s effectiveness or reliability, nor a full financial compliance audit from the ECA (Benedetto 2020, 11). Concerns about EFSI’s financial accountability have pointed to its ‘technical [non-majoritarian] management’ with limited political oversight in terms of its appointment and accountability (Benedetto 2020, 13). Naert (2017, 6) claims that EFSI is not a proper fund or legal entity, since it does not trade independently, bit is merely ‘a label for new EIB assets’.

Third, we have seen experimental financing through ‘blending’ and ‘cross financing’. The launch of the blending call in 2017 aimed at selecting actions that would combine CEF support with financing from EFSI, the EIB, a national promotional bank or private sector investor – in this case, both public-private and supranational. It introduced the concept of financial readiness, requiring beneficiaries to demonstrate full financial disclosure (for the loan part of the investment). Achieving modal shift to rail is hampered by a lack of interoperability and the absence of coordinated soft policies, such as road tariffs, environmental regulations, or ‘cross-financing’ (European Court of Auditors 2020, 15). Cross-financing is intended to stimulate more environmentally friendly transport by subsidizing it using revenue collected from less green modes, through a carbon tax, congestion charge or reintroduced Eurovignette. However, member states have been slow on the uptake, e.g. on the Munich-Verona corridor, only Austria uses cross-financing to promote modal shift from road to rail. Despite promotional efforts by the European Coordinator’s, Italy and Germany still do not use it, despite committing to do so in 2009 (European Court of Auditors 2020, p.25, para 29).

4.4 Networks, formalism and deliberation: the Commission’s recourse to EU evaluation

The Commission has turned to other EU bodies such as the European Economic Social Committee – which represents key stakeholder groups in the single market – to carry out policy evaluation of the trans-European transport network (European Economic and Social Committee 2020; Community of European Railways 2020). This is a strategic move to enhance its own informational resources but also learn how the pandemic has affected policy performance. The EESC held study group meetings, carried out fact-finding missions, and visited Corridor construction sites of cross-border projects, bringing together public authorities, employers, workers and civil society organisations. Online questionnaires gauged the perceived relevance, effectiveness, and European added value of the TEN-T for the single market: The free movement of persons and goods constitutes one of the fundamental freedoms of the European Union. Sustainable, competitive, reliable, free-flowing and profitable transport is a pre-condition for European prosperity, also and especially in the current pandemic. The Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) programme has been conceived to contribute to closing gaps, removing bottlenecks and eliminating technical and administrative barriers that exist between the national transport networks of each EU Member State. (ibid. para 1.1)

Regarding the criterion of ‘relevance’, the evaluation framed the rationale for TENs as a tool for economic integration in terms of the link between pandemic recovery tools and structural support: ‘The Coronavirus Response Investment Initiative requires a functioning single market and supports investment in infrastructure in order to achieve it.’ (ibid. para 2.2). The main obstacles to the timely implementation of TEN-T projects include were recognised as changes in national political priorities where they influence projects with a cross-border significance, and opposition from citizens or stakeholders. Public procurement rules were acknowledged as being too slow for the design and award of contracts, which were held up by unclear subcontracting rules over the liability of main contractors (ibid. para 4.4). Evaluation has formally framed trans-European networks as key to the global economic orientation of the EU, advocating that, to be in line with the new Commission’s geopolitical objectives, the core network corridors must be interconnected for all goods and passengers: ‘As a priority, a Forum should be established including neighbouring countries to facilitate the integration of the TEN-T Network with the rest of the world, widening the macroregional strategies (ibid. para 4.6). Evaluation has been an important discursive tool for claiming the link between EU market competitiveness and cybersecurity issues within the TEN-T regulations, seeing 5 G coverage to be ‘a shifting paradigm for a modern transport network’ (ibid. para 4.15). In short, its findings have contributed new ideas, namely, that the Next-Generation EU recovery instrument should refer extensively to sustainable infrastructure investments in transport, given that further digitalisation (ERTMS, Single European Skies) would make the market ‘more resilient in the event of a crisis, serving all means of transport’ (ibid. para 4.18) (see Cini and Czulno 2022). Following disruption to transport and mobility chains, the Commission (2020) has also issued ‘practical advice’ on how to implement its guidelines for border management. Member States were requested to designate all relevant internal crossing points on the TEN-T as ‘green lane’ border crossings to ‘restore the smooth flow of goods in the European Union’. In short, the pandemic has been a typical crisis window of opportunity to raise political awareness as to the role of the core network for single market integration.

5. The Commission’s coordination mechanisms: the limits of hybrid governance?

In line with the features of experimentalist governance, we can see in the TENs case, clear evidence of ‘networked deliberative decision making’ on an informal basis among political and technical elites, which provides legitimacy to transform the TEN-T decision-making architecture. The Commission’s implementation experience over several decades, and its resilience in seeking innovate governance solutions, has led to several institutional devices being operated in combination (Sabel and Zeitlin 2010). The first hypothesis that ‘the existence of an institutionalised coordination body in the hybrid multi-level governance architecture promotes resilience in or furthers single market integration’ would seem to hold, even if there are clear limits to the Commission’s experiments when it comes to securing timely policy implementation, not least given: the challenges of coordination in a multi-level governance system; the reliance on private sector financing; and the ultimate position of the member states as decision-makers when it comes to national investment plans and prioritisation. This section explores the limitations of hybrid governance for trans-European networks.

First, the shared management system poses limitations when it comes to securing reliable data needed for assessing and managing large-scale TEN-T projects. The European Court of Auditors (2020) has been particularly vocal about the limited effectiveness of the ECs, advocating a strengthened role, asserting that the Commission’s oversight is currently limited.

Although they are responsible for long and complex corridors, the coordinators have few resources and only informal powers at their disposal. This type of framework gives the Commission too distant a role in overseeing the timely completion of the network by the Member States (European Court of Auditors 2020: 40 para 61) (own emphasis).

Greater enforcement of the corridor work plans is needed, potentially by allowing the Coordinators a presence at key meetings of management boards, and by improving their communications role (European Court of Auditors 2020). The EESC evaluation recognises the ECs’ positive contribution but reveals that certain stakeholders indicate unevenness if their work between countries and along corridors’, some asserting they be made more accountable, with the EP developing criteria to assess their performance: ‘The intervention of Coordinators must be relevant at all stages of development and their impact should be clearly visible.’ (European Economic and Social Committee 2020, para 4.10).

The Commission accepts that the EC’s role needs expanding, advocating that: their opinion should be taken on board for all funding applications; that they should closely follow the permit granting procedure for cross-border projects; and have powers to request the competent authority to report regularly on progress achieved (European Commission 2018a). Nonetheless, the Commission has defended the work of ECs:

European Coordinators have been working continuously […] directly involved in the supervisory boards of the joint entities of the cross-border projects. Given the sensitive political context in which such major investments are carried out, the activities of Coordinators by meeting ministers, stakeholders, project managers etc. are essential. The Council has recognized “the important role of the European Coordinators in facilitating timely and effective implementation of the multimodal Core Network Corridors”. (Commission reply, European Court of Auditors 2020, 77).

The Commission has naturally defended its coordination efforts, arguing that ‘in many cases, the involvement of the Commission (e.g. through grant agreements, implementing decisions, the work of the coordinators etc.) has precisely been the stabilizing factor ensuring the implementation in the long run’, though some issues are beyond its control (Commission reply, European Court of Auditors 2020, 85).

Regarding the Commission’s recourse to, and reliance on, work conducted by other EU bodies, the Commission ultimately suffers from a lack of data and informational deficiencies when it comes to monitoring policy. It has no real systematic mechanism for measuring results once a TEN-T project has begun, and yet the Commission still links EU co-funding for projects exclusively to outputs attained. It does not collect information on the results of investments at project level, i.e. whether and when the infrastructure will achieve its expected results (European Court of Auditors 2020, 65); in short, it has no data on the effects of co-funded constructions, which is paradoxical since TENs and EFSI are driven by a logic of leverage and economic multiplier effects.

Third, and related to the above, is the inadequacy of monitoring and evaluation. When provided for by the legislation, the INEA agency performs ex post evaluations of parts of the network, where projects are implemented under shared management. However, there is no systematic ex post evaluation of individual infrastructure sections, even though they are often multi-billion-Euro investments, which as the auditor recognises, makes it difficult to learn from past problems (European Court of Auditors 2020). Similarly, in terms of appraisal (ex-ante evaluation), the Commission has no models or specific data-collection procedures in place to independently assess the potential for passenger and freight traffic before committing EU co-funding to projects (ibid.: 28).

Fourth, CEF money often goes unspent, given the usual problems of absorption, when projects do not move fast enough. When a spending action is not implemented according to the conditions set out in the grant agreement, or not completed on time, billions of Euros of EU co-funding can be withdrawn in line with the ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ principle (European Court of Auditors 2020). The INEA agency has identified ongoing financial problems linked to the sheer complexity of ‘transport flagship infrastructures’ (TFIs).

Finally, most fundamentally perhaps, there is no competence centre within the Commission dealing specifically with large-scale investments that can provide a holistic overview of TEN-T implementation. A unit deals with major projects under shared management, supported by staff with sectoral experience, but the lack of truly dedicated Commission service means that managing authorities in the member states, which at times provide up to 85% of EU co-funding for the construction, cannot draw on specific expertise at the supranational level to support the construction and management of such ambitious infrastructure (European Court of Auditors 2020). Such a centre could ‘guide and steer project promoters on a continuous basis’ over the lifetime of a project to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of EU co-funding, and support blending through the CEF, Cohesion policy and EIB instruments (ibid. 34, para 48).

6. Conclusion

This article has sought to analyse the Commission’s role in TENs policy coordination and understand the reasons for the hybrid governance mix we see today. It has endeavoured to make sense of key innovations in TENs governance and illustrate the constellations of multi-level and private-public actors engaged in governance and financing. We can observe an evolution in these arrangements as a resilient Commission has learnt from experience and experimented with new instruments, of which political coordinators and corridor forums appear to be the most effective. Experimentalist governance have been useful in providing a lens and loose organising mechanism for considering how its features of networked deliberative governance, informalism and evaluation apply to TENs policy-making.

The TENs case demonstrates how forums and coordinators bring ‘restorative’ and ‘transformative’ energy to implementation in a policy area rife with technical complexity, political uncertainty, and facing ‘coordination deficits’ from traditional governance methods. They have helped find workable solutions to revise medium-term goals and provided further guidance, maximising the inclusion of all stakeholders, arguably also as a depoliticization strategy. Forums, as institutional sites for deliberation and consultation, provide informal platforms for review, deliberation, monitoring and problem-solving.

In line with Mertens and Thiemann (2022), the Commission’s approach to investing in the physical completion of the single market continues to be dependent on the workings of hybrid modes of governance, both multi-level and public-private, but is further complicated by the mix of direct and shared project management. Many lower-level transport investment decisions under shared management rest with local managing authorities. The use of high-profile supranational political actors, engaging in a ‘personal’ (sometimes informal) capacity often in the member states, has brought political kudos to policy implementation. It reminds us of the importance of political leadership, and the potential influence of former national political actors at the national level. The reshaping of TENs projects as ‘corridors’ meant that the wider geographical scope, larger scale, and interdependence of cross-borders investments required innovative governance arrangements. The socialisation of a wide mix of multi-level, public-private stakeholders can be seen as a form of networked deliberative governance. Arguably, governance arrangements are not merely a means to deliver policy but have become policy – the substance and governance of TEN-T corridors are entwined.

For TENs, the existence of an institutionalised coordination body does promote resilience in the physical integration of the single market (H1). In renewed efforts, the Commission has promoted deliberated networks of multi-level actors and recognised the importance of political actors in securing advances through consultation and informal means. European Coordinators have played important appointed and delegated roles. Moreover, the presence of public–private interactions in the hybrid governance architecture would seem to promote resilience in, or further, EU single market integration (H2) given that TENs hybrid governance promotes financial tools that depend on the interaction and collaboration of public authorities with private actors in finance and banking. The Commission has mobilised private actors in rail infrastructure construction and financing to draw on informational resources crucial for project implementation. However, the Commission’s coordination capacity (effective monitoring, decision-making tools, data access, visibility) remains limited, while the hybrid governance architecture risks exacerbating delays.

To sum up, TENs policy is by no means a case of renationalisation, but one does observe the continued dominant position of 27 ministries for transport when it comes to implementation on the ground. Arguably, the EU primary data sources analysed here were unlikely to explicitly recognise renationalisation as a phenomenon. Despite renewed attempts by an ever resilient Commission to find innovative arrangements to work towards the physical completion of the single market, and some minor legal empowerment, its room for manoeuvre is limited given that investment priorities are set nationally. Nonetheless, TENs is a EU long-term strategy and show resilience as a tool for economic integration. It remains a fascinating example of how policy can be expressed and best understood through its experimentalist – but still inadequate – governance (Spendzharova and Raudla 2022). Like the single market, the TEN’s hybrid governance arrangements are incomplete, which constrains – slows down – the scale and scope of integration in transport policy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding

This work was supported by the ERASMUS+ Jean Monnet Network VISTA, Project number 612044-EPP-1-2019-1-NL-EPPJMO-NETWORK, Grant Decision Nr 2019-1609/001–001.