Connecting Europe | Iveta Radicova | Mediterranean Corridor (audio file)
CEF support to Mediterranean Corridor - May 2020
CEF support to Mediterranean Corridor - April 2018
CEF Transport projects by country
Overview
The Mediterranean Corridor is the main east-west axis in the TEN-T Network south of the Alps. It runs between the south-western Mediterranean region of Spain and the Ukrainian border with Hungary, following the coastlines of Spain and France and crossing the Alps towards the east through Italy, Slovenia and Croatia and continuing through Hungary up to its eastern border with Ukraine. The corridor primarily consists of road and rail, aside from the Po River, several canals in Northern Italy and the Rhone River from Lyon to Marseille. The corridor is approximately 3000 km long; it will provide a multimodal link for the ports of the Western Mediterranean with the center of the EU. It will also create an east-west link through the southern part of the EU, contribute to a modal shift from road to rail in sensitive areas such as the Pyrenees and the Alps, and connect some of the major urban areas of the EU with high-speed trains.
Main bottlenecks and missing links
The key section of the corridor is the new cross-border rail link between France and Italy (Lyon-Turin). In addition, the cross-border links with Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary need to be taken into account. Multimodal connections with ports in Spain and France have to be developed and some railway sections in Italy and France need to be upgraded in order to remove key bottlenecks. The coexistence of two gauges (1668 mm in Spain and 1435mm in the other countries) is another challenge for this corridor, as is the full integration of the newest Member State, Croatia.
Success stories
The 621 km Madrid-Barcelona high-speed line, opened in February 2008, has seen millions of passengers move from air and road to rail due to the reduction of journey times between the two cities from 5 hrs to 2 hrs 38 mins. This line was extended towards France via the Perpignan-Figueras cross-border tunnel and links Spain to the trans-European high-speed network. High-speed passenger services between Barcelona and Paris started in December 2013.
CEF: Pre-identified projects
European Coordinator for the TEN-T Mediterranean Corridor, Ms Iveta Radičová
Ms Iveta Radičová was born on 7 December 1956 in Bratislava, Slovakia. Ms Radičová was appointed European Coordinator for the TEN-T Mediterranean Corridor on 16 September 2018, following on Laurens Jan Brinkhorst.
Previous assignments
2011-2012: Minister of Defence
2010-2012: Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic
2006-2009: Deputy at the Slovak National Parliament
2005-2006: Minister of Labour, Social Affairs and Family SR
2005: Prof. Department of Sociology, Nitra, Slovakia; Director of Institute of Sociology, SAS
1997: Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University
1993-1997: Academia Istropolitana, Deputy Director
1990-1993: Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University
1979-1989: Institute of Sociology, Slovak Academy of Sciences
Current tasks
- Dean, Faculty of Mass Media, Paneuropean University Slovakia
- Professor, BISLA, Slovakia
- Professor, Robert Bosch Academy, Berlin, Germany
Ms Iveta Radičová, European Coordinator
To contact Ms Radičová, please use the advisor email below
Mr Wojciech Sopinski, Advisor of the European Coordinator
wojciech.sopinski@ec.europa.eu
Tel. +32-(0)2-299 9926
Postal address:
Mediterranean CNC / TEN-T
Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport
Rue de Mot 28
1049 Brussels
Belgium