Promoters of the Canal Seine Nord Europe set out their vision
Promoters of the Canal Seine Nord Europe set out their vision
L’Antenne reports that the promoters of the Seine-Nord canal defended themselves on Friday September 4 against the European Court of Auditors, who had denounced the increase in costs of the project.
“The figures used by the European Court of Auditors, to estimate the delay and the additional cost of the project, correspond neither to the genesis, nor to the current reality of the project”, argued the association, chaired by the mayor of Compiègne (Oise) Philippe Marini (LR). In its report published on June 16 on several large cross-border transport projects in the EU, the institution responsible for ensuring the proper use of European funds estimated that the costs of the project had “practically tripled” to stand at 4 , 97 billion euros. The association rejects the method of calculation of the Court of Auditors which “takes as a basis the initial pre-costing of 1993, that is to say 1.2 billion euros”, stressing that “at that date, the route and the template of the project were very different”.
The “overly optimistic” traffic figures were also discussed, but it was argued that “4 million tonnes of goods currently pass through the Canal du Nord, with a river modal share of around 3%.” “Traffic forecasts are in the order of 20 million by 2060 thanks to the opening of the Seine-Nord Europe canal. This would increase the modal share of the waterway on this axis to 12%, which corresponds to the rate observed in French territories served by the large gauge waterway.”