Feb. 27, 2008
Prior to a fall meeting in Prague between the European Commission and the Czech Transport Ministry to negotiate EU investment of EUR 5.8 billion in transport infrastructure, NGOs warned that existing development plans are a relic from the Czech Republic's communist past and could result in a complete squandering of public monies and unnecessary environmental damage.
The Environmental Legal Service, a Czech NGO, sent letters to EU commissioners Barros, Dimas and Huebner, urging that action be taken to address shortcomings in the Operational Programme for Transport (OPT) outlined for the 2007-13 period.
The Czech Republic's Supreme Audit Office concluded recently that the government's spending of public money on national transport projects is both unjustified and ineffective. Motorway and railway development, for example, is being carried out according to schemes dating back to the 1970s, and there have been no new assessments or suggested alternative routes. One case in point is that OPT's predetermined road connection between Brno and Vienna involves a border crossing point at Mikulov, though opponents argue it would be cheaper and less harmful environmentally to reroute through Breslau.
"Project prioritisation is based on political pressures rather than on expert assessment of necessity, cost-effectiveness and environmental impact," said Martin Konecny, EU funds coordinator for CEE Bankwatch and Friends of the Earth Europe.
The Supreme Audit Office also discovered that Czech motorways are proving unjustifiably expensive-even more so than new German motorways of comparable quality despite far lower labour costs in the Czech Republic.
"The EU should not finance transport projects without an objective comparison of different variants from transport, economic and environmental points of view," said Pavel Cerny of the Environmental Law Service. "The Czech transport plan must not be approved in its current state, which would fix the routes of problematic motorways. Pressure from Brussels seems to be the only way to bring any order to the Czech transport planning process."
