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Brussels, December 4 (TASR) – Slovakia wants to apply for European Union (EU) funds in the field of infrastructure, through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) and through military mobility, offered by the future long-term EU budget after 2027. State Secretary of the Ministry of Transport of the Slovak Republic Denisa Žiláková stated this in Brussels on Thursday during the meeting of the EU Council for Transport and Energy, TASR’s correspondent reports.
Denisa Žiláková pointed out that the European Commission (EC) presented at the Council of Ministers meeting a new EU financial framework for 2028 – 2034, in which the Connecting Europe Facility has twice the allocation of the current programming period. She specified that it also includes military mobility, for which the European Commission has proposed to allocate ten times more resources than before.
“Infrastructure projects will be able to be built from the Connecting Europe Facility. For us, these are certainly motorways, roads and railways. That is something we really need,” the state secretary described the situation.
To TASR’s question of whether, under this funding, Slovakia also wants to repair bridges, because many of them are in a critical condition, Žiláková admitted that it is not yet possible to “go into depth” with planning, because this instrument, including the use of military mobility, has so far been presented only in general terms.
“The eligible expenditures will be shaped over the coming years, but since the core of CEF is military mobility, I personally think that bridges are absolutely part of military mobility. Transporters or armored vehicles clearly drive over bridges, so this should be an eligible activity and we will definitely push for it to be so,” she explained.
She considers another interesting element presented by the EC to be the action plan for high-speed railways. The ministers supported this proposal, which the European Commission is also preparing to present to the wider public. Slovakia does not have this type of railway on its territory, but according to her, the EC’s action plan is promising for Slovakia as well, in that it will be connected to a railway network with trains running at speeds above 200 kilometers per hour.
“The Commission presented milestones and also presented potential financial resources from which this high-speed railway is to be built. It is to be built across all of Europe. It concerns us very closely, because it would connect our country, the V4 states and of course Austria as well,” said Žiláková. She welcomed the fact that the EU executive also outlined some simplifications, for example the introduction of a single travel ticket, which should unify payments and the various tickets used in public mass transport.
“We are very pleased with this proposal and we adopted it unanimously,” she described the atmosphere of the ministerial negotiations in Brussels. (December 4)
“Infrastructure projects will be able to be built from the Connecting Europe Facility. For us, these are certainly motorways, roads and railways.” Denisa Žiláková