Will 2nd call of Marco Polo successor program make us forget the 1st call's disaster?

Recently, Member States have agreed to the European Commission's draft work programs for the Connecting Europe Facility for Transport. It’s now certain that the priority of Freight Transport Services within the Annual Work program will have a second call for proposals. This subprogram, to be regarded as successor to the former Marco Polo program (2003-2013), offers an interesting opportunity for transport companies to receive financial support for their sustainable activities. After the disaster of the first call at the end of 2014, does it deserve a second chance?

In my article of half a year ago, I explained why the first call for proposals under Freight Transport Services was a failure:

  • Only 5 proposals received funding, equal to less than 25% of the available budget,
  • The set-up was complex, creating large confusion amongst the target group:
  • 7 action types to be funded and each with different eligibility of costs (for instance, one action type gave funding based on operational costs, the other on capital expenditure).
  • The clear objectives of the Marco Polo program were lost.

The work program informs us the focus on combined transport has returned. General objective is to stimulate implementation of innovative, efficient and sustainable freight transport services on both Core and Comprehensive Network sections of the TEN-T network.
Specific objectives are now:
a) Shifting cargo to more sustainable, energy-efficient modes,
b) Improving integration between transport modes of existing multimodal services,
c) Improving efficiency of supply chains, to reduce empty runs, increase load factors and limit transport time.
The division in 4 objectives and 7 action types is abandoned.

The method for calculating the amount of funding has been simplified, but maybe not in the interest of transport companies: operational costs of a transport service are not to be funded, but only investments. For a company which likes to have the smallest amount of assets on the balance sheet this is not good news. In reality it is not too bad; besides purchase, also rent or lease of durable assets in small scale ancillary infrastructure, superstructures and equipment are possible, as long as the assets are not outsourced. The recommended minimum amount of funding of € 1 million remains, which at 20% funding means a minimum of around € 5 million of eligible costs need to be collected.

The call text still needs to be published, but all-in-all, it seems the set-up of the little program really has been simplified. Of course your project needs to be defined in a different way as would have been the case under Marco Polo.

From DG MOVE and INEA I have gathered detailed information on the priority of Freight Transport Services, which together with information from the Annual Work program I've compiled in a factsheet. Upon your request it will be sent to you. With my experience in about 70 successful Marco Polo, TEN-T and CEF-T applications, I’m happy to be of service.

Vincent van den Bosch

 

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