The Mediterranean Corridor : A European victory for Catalonia

On 19 November, a plenary session of the European Parliament granted final approval to the Mediterranean Corridor. This is now part of the priority European railway transportation networks. The vote was clear:  546 for and 104 against, with 41 abstaining. Furthermore, this railway map is not being passed as a mere EU directive but rather as a compulsory European regulation, binding all member states. All, that is Spain too, whether they like it or not.

The 19^th of November will go down in history as very important day and we can say that Catalonia has achieved a great European victory. We should remember that in 2003 Spain's Aznar administration imposed on the European Union's railway corridors map the Central Corridor, through the Aragonese Pyrinees, as the only corridor between the Iberian Peninsula and Europe. Aznar, the same who recently threatened to throw Catalan Prime Minister Artur Mas into jail for 5 years if he called a referendum. Europe has bad news for Aznar:  the Central Corridor is over. Long live the Mediterranean Corridor! The decision by the EU means that the Mediterranean Corridor will enjoy European co-financing, covering up to between 20% and 40% of its total cost.

The vote by the European Parliament is not just a victory for Catalonia and Valencia, but also for economic rationality. Always important, and more so at a time of a deep financial crisis and significant budgetary restrictions. The European Parliament has definitively confirmed the European Commission's working methodology, based on choosing railway investments according to two criteria: wealth creation and added value for the European economy. The result is a regulation containing the map of priority railways already put forward by the European Commission in 2011 and passed by the European Parliament's Transportation Committee in December 2012. Then the Committee accepted each and every of the 33 amendments put forward in cooperation with Barcelona Harbour. The result is that we can look forward to the future of this port as a fully integrated European infrastructure, connected to the great railway and highway networks of the European Union. The decision, long overdue, is all the more pressing due to incoming competition from the Northern Sea Route and the “New Silk Road” through Central Asia. At a time of fast changing economic geography, key Catalan infrastructures cannot remain prisoners of Spain's autarchic, Madrid-centric, irrational policies. Too much is at stake. Fortunately, European institutions and the EU member states see things exactly the same way as Catalans do. The European Parliament's vote is just final confirmation of this.

France merits a special mention. Catalonia has a debt of gratitude with Paris since from day one she has steadily refused to play ball with Madrid's, rejecting plans to drill the Central Pyrenees and insisting on connections along the Mediterranean Cost. Successive French leaders have understood that their country's economic and strategic interests fitted with Catalonia's and have not bulged an inch. Now the stage is open not just for increased bilateral trade but also for much easier travel, for both business and leisure. Just to mention an example, the Mediterranean Corridor will facilitate the integration between Catalonia's emerging aero-spatial components industry with Tolosa's [Toulouse] plane making hub. Both countries will benefit from these tighter links.

In contrast with French and European leaders, Spanish politicians unfortunately persist in their old ways. Just one day before the European Parliament's final vote, during a debate on this issue, Spanish MEP Luis de Grandes, a member of the Popular Party (PP), was lamentable. He said that “all the PP administrations have been in favour of the Mediterranean Corridor”.  Some of the MEPs present burst into laugh, it is incredible how Spanish politicians often lie in their speeches without any qualms. One only needs to look at the EU's official maps, and this was just my reply to him. Instead of saying “great, from now on we shall work together”, Spanish political narrative, in the midst of the XXI Century, remains rhetorical, rigid, and dogmatic. Unable to acknowledge reality, while denying the most basic facts and truths. That day I posted on my Twitter account (@ramontremosa) the videos with the speeches in the debate, so anybody can see this and judge for himself.

Concerning the financing of the European Corridor, following the EU's final decision the European budget will finance between 20% and 40% of the total cost.  The rest will be co-financed by member state governments and private investors, since the EU budgets for the 2014-2020 period do not cover the whole European priority network. In this regard, high-ranking officials at the European Commission, such as Jean Eric Paquet (Director, MOVE.B - European Mobility Network, Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport), have already told the European Parliament that they favour “making the transfer of European funds to a country conditional on it effectively building the European priority network”. In other words: Madrid will not get a single cent from the EU to build any more white elephants, funds will only be handed over to co-finance the Mediterranean Corridor. Paquet made this clear, adding that “it is necessary to get some Mediterranean ports to also be European ports, since to date, devoid of railway connections, Europe's Mediterranean ports are only local ports, just serving local industry and their local hinterland”.

When it comes to financing the portion of the Mediterranean Corridor's cost not covered by the EU budget, we must stress that it will be possible to resort to “project bonds” (project-specific bond issues). This is an initiative by the European Investment Bank and the European Commission designed to raise capital from private investors in order to finance the construction of the European railway corridors. Another reason why it is so important that the choice of corridors be based on a solid cost-benefit analyses, in order to ensure a clear probability that the benefits from that particular investment will sustain the necessary return to investors.

To conclude, we can say that the European Parliament's vote is a victory for Catalonia, for France, for the EU, for economic rationality, for the interests of tax payers, and for a modern, well integrated Europe, able to effectively compete with other regions of the world. Furthermore, it confirms that in the struggle between Catalonia and Spain, Europe is supporting the former. Not to harm the latter, rather the contrary, since only once Catalonia is independent will Spain become a true democracy and implement the long-delayed economic reforms whose absence is dragging down her economy. As long as Catalonia can be plundered, Spanish bureaucrats and politicians have no real incentive to reform.