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SAO: Subsidies for transporting goods by rail and water did not help, road transport is increasing

by AI | 30.Jul 2024 | Europe in brief AI

There is a risk that the national goal of shifting a total of 30 percent of road freight transport over distances exceeding 300 kilometers to rail or inland waterways by 2030 will not be met.

Hundreds of trucks in a traffic jam on the A8 motorway. Photo: Peter Kneffel/dpa

Prague – The impact of subsidies from the state and the European Union on the development of combined freight transport, which was supposed to boost the transport of goods by rail or water and reduce road transport, is minimal. Instead, road freight transport is increasing, the Supreme Audit Office (SAO) said today in a press release on the results of the subsidy audit. According to the report, rail freight transport stagnates despite subsidies, and water freight transport almost does not exist. In response to the audit results, the Ministry of Transport told ČTK that rail transport in the period under review was negatively affected by the covid-19 pandemic and the decline in coal and other commodities transport. According to the office, it is also necessary to invest in increasing the capacity of the lines.

According to the SAO, the Ministry planned to support projects for the development of combined freight transport with CZK 4.7 billion from 2015 to 2023 in an effort to make freight transport more ecological. In the end, it supported 14 projects and spent CZK 650 million on them. According to the SAO, it did not use 86 percent of the allocated money. There is a risk that the national goal of transferring a total of 30 percent of road freight transport over distances of more than 300 kilometers to rail or inland waterway transport by 2030 will not be met, auditors said.

“This goal is set EU-wide and must therefore be the result of the interaction of measures across the EU. It does not make sense to evaluate it only nationally,” Ministry spokesman František Jemelka said in response to the SAO’s conclusions. “Railways must now be focused on transport conducted by road, in the form of cooperation between road and rail carriers in continental combined transport. But that is only in its early stages,” he added.

According to information from several ministries this spring, the state has used at least 23 percent of the money from European funds in transport over 20 years of EU membership. In the various operational programs focused on transport, the state has drawn more than CZK 467 billion.