Impact of transport infrastructure on international competitiveness of Europe
I-C-EU, led by TML, was conducted on behalf of the European Commission (EC) Directorate-General for Research & Innovation 7th Research Framework Programme. It started 1 October 2012 and ended 30 September 2014.
17 June 2010, the European Union adopted the Europe 2020 Strategy. Replacing the previous Lisbon Strategy (2000 – 2010), the transition process between the two strategy plans happens exactly at the time when Europe is undergoing its hardest economic crisis since its formation. The objective of getting out of the crisis together with the urgent need to remain highly competitive, especially against the new emerging economies, has made Europe’s competitiveness and economic performance fundamental issues.
In line with the Europe 2020 Strategy’s flagship initiatives, the White Paper 2011 has summarized the main objective of European transport strategy, which is to help establish a system that underpins European economic progress, enhances competitiveness, and offers high quality mobility services by using resources more efficiently. Given the above challenges and strategy setting, it is obvious that a stronger role and a bigger contribution of the transport sector in the improvement of European economic growth and competitiveness are highly expected.
I-C-EU clarifies the relationship between transport infrastructure investment and its wider economic impacts, namely competitiveness and economic growth in particular. This clarification has been made possible by exploring the state-of-the-art of the theoretical methodology of the assessment tools, analysing the current situation of European economic and competitiveness as well as its present and future challenges and taking into account current the European strategy being set to improve its economic performance and competitiveness. Using this triad of concepts has allowed I-C-EU to provide recommendations to the EC on making political interventions to enhance the competitiveness of Europe both externally, i.e. in relation to the rest of the world and internally, i.e. between its countries and regions.
Three main different outputs have been produced in this project:
- a synthesis of the relationship between transport infrastructure investment, competitiveness and economic growth
- an improvement of the methodology used to assess the impacts of investment in transport infrastructures especially on competitiveness and economic growth
- a synthesis of recommendations on assessing EU policy in transport infrastructure investment in respect of competitiveness and economic growth
Accepted open-to-public deliverables and other information from past events and other publications are available in this project website.
Please feel free to contact us for further information and discussion!
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