EU updates TENT-T indicative road and railway maps, including Ukraine in the routes

On Friday, December 22, Ukraine and the European Union have agreed on the acceptability of updated indicative road and railway maps of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) for both parties, Ukraine’s Ministry of Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development has reported.

Key facts

• “This decision is a strategic step in the process of Ukraine’s integration into the EU and will contribute to the implementation of the Solidarity Lanes initiative for the export of Ukrainian agricultural products and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Ukraine,” Deputy Prime Minister for Reconstruction, Minister of Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development of Ukraine Oleksandr Kubrakov said.
• The update of the TEN-T indicative maps is aimed at including new routes leading to the border with Poland and Moldova, identified as priorities for the development of railway communication with the EU using the infrastructure of the European standard 1435 mm gauge, in particular, the section Lviv – Rava Ruska – Lublin.

In addition, it concerns the following routes:

• Odesa – Berezyne – Basarabeasca (to Chisinau and Reni, Moldova),
• Zhytomyr – Vinnytsia – Yampil (to Rîşcani, Moldova),
• Chop – Uzhgorod – Sambir – Lviv,
• Krasnohrad – Poltava, Krasnohrad – Kharkiv, and Krasnohrad – Dnipro.

According to the updated TEN-T indicative maps, routes leading to the borders of aggressor countries will be downgraded. Earlier the European Commission excluded Russian and Belarusian routes from the TEN-T network and also downgraded the status of routes in the EU at the junctions with these countries.

Context

The EU is developing the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) to connect Europe from west to east and from north to south with a network of roads, railways, airports, inland waterways, and maritime ports. The development of the transport system is taking place in two stages: the TEN-T’s core network will be completed by the end of 2030 and its comprehensive network will be finished by the end of 2050.

Ukraine joined the TEN-T in 2017. According to the European Commission’s Indicative Investment Plan for the development of TEN-T corridors, by 2030 Ukraine plans to implement projects for a total amount of €4.45 billion, the highest indicator among all Eastern Partnership countries of the EU.

Recently, Oleh Yakovenko, Director of the Strategy and Transformation Department of Ukrzaliznytsia, informed that the European Commission may approve indicative maps of the TEN-T transport network, which provide for the extension of the network corridors to the territory of Ukraine and Moldova as early as in the first quarter of 2024. “We are talking about almost 3,300 km of the European standard 1435 mm gauge on the territory of Ukraine,” Yakovenko said.

forbes.ua