The European Court of Auditors published today a report on the ‘Effectiveness of EU-supported public urban transport projects.’

The report illustrated that co-funding from European Structural and Investment (ESI) Funds for urban transport projects has been vastly underutilized, since 2/3 of the projects have been underperforming. It has been established that overestimation of users and the lack of coordination between modes of transport, parking policy and the absence of urban mobility plans contributed to the underutilization. Thus, the biggest identified weaknesses were 1) project design and 2) inadequate mobility policy.  These further contributed to underperformance in terms of economic and social policies. 

For the purpose of the report, performance of 26 public urban transport projects in five Member States (MS) – Spain, France, Italy, Poland, and Portugal – was analyzed. The EU funding allocated to urban transport in these five MSs represents 50% of the total EU funding. As a rule, the European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund co-finance urban transport projects in eligible regions of the MSs. The EU contribution, for urban transport projects, typically represents up to 85% of the total related eligible expenditure.

The European Court of Auditors made five concrete recommendations to the European Commission in order to ensure improvements of the future projects:

1. Management tools should be put in place to monitor the quality of the service and the level of user satisfaction once projects are operational
2. Minimum number of result indicators with related targets should be identified in the grant agreements and are subsequently measured
3. The estimation of the number of expected users should  be rigorously analyzed and the choice of the mode of transport should be supported by a quantified comparison of different transport options
4. Urban transport projects should be included in a mobility policy
5. Relevant recommendations should be addressed by the individual MSs when managing EU-funded urban transport projects.

Special Report: Effectiveness of EU-supported public urban transport projects  

Press release: European Commission Press Release Database