The original design of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) that will connect the 27 countries of the EU will reach the decade of existence. All runners multimodal infrastructures which also includes railways, other means of transportation such as roads and ships and enclaves such as ports and logistics or airport terminals to provide services to people and goods.
The train line Algeciras-Bobadilla It has been part of TEN-T since 2013, when the European Union validated the first version of the network. And it is combined as the southern head of the Atlantic and Mediterranean corridors leaving the Port of Algeciras. However, since then the TEN-T networks have obtained results with the aim of structuring the Member States of the Union as much as possible.
The commissioner of the Atlantic Corridor, José Antonio Sebastián, explained in his recent participation in the monthly colloquium of the Propeller Club Algeciras that the Atlantic Corridor consists of 63% of the population of Spain and 68% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 3,900 kilometers and 2,800 road networks.
The rail corridor has evolved since its original conception with a revision in force since 2021, which allows the inclusion of new sections covering Galicia, Asturias, Navarra, Aragón and Andalusia. In Andalusia, this revision includes a branch that will connect the provinces of Huelva and Seville on the route that leads to the north of the country.
Fair financing
The commissioner continued that the two runners equal to investment effort of the Government of Spain in the latest General State Budgets. Therefore, according to Sebastián, for 2023 the state accounts allocate 1,648 million euros for sections of the Atlantic Corridor and another 1,695 for the Mediterranean.
And the funds from the Recovery and Resilience Plan must be added to the planned amount, which will cover until 2026 with 2,478 million to be distributed over four years.
In total, the complete deployment of the Atlantic Corridor cost 49,406 million euros, of which 33,325 million have already been killed. They remain, therefore, pending 16,080 million to complete all branches.
“From 2013 to 2023, 10,013 million euros have been invested, at a rate of one billion per year. Now, between the budget allocation and European Union funds, they an average of 2.3 billion per year which means more than duplicating what is being done,” explained the representative of the commissioner.
