On May 15, EUObserver quoted a report by Birdlife International saying that European Union transport “mega-projects” threatened over a thousand protected nature sites in Europe, including parts of Natura 2000 environmental network of protected areas. A coalition of European environmental organisations, including Transport & Environment (T&E), the European Environment Bureau and CEE Bankwatch Network, supported this statement. On May 13, the coalition presented the results of its research in European Parliament.
The Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) is endangering some of the most rare European bird species and nature habitats, according to the report. TEN-T includes 21 so called “priority projects” of new transport corridors, which only partially overlap with the European transport infrastructure that already exists. Therefore many other uninhabited areas populated only by wild nature are now at risk of being transformed into transport corridors by 2020 when TEN-T construction is planned to be completed.
Four of the TEN-T transport corridors pass through Bulgaria. One such project, which would remove more than 1500km of bottlenecks on the Rhine-Main-Danube corridor to improve its navigability, could negatively affect about 83 different nature sites in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary, and another 48 important bird areas in Bulgaria and Romania.
According to T&E director Jos Dings, the “story” of TEN-T priority transport infrastructure projects is “a classic example of old-fashioned political horse-trading”. He said that the projects were chosen behind closed doors and pushed through without consideration of the economic and environmental risks.
Clairie Papazoglou, regional director of BirdLife International, said that as a minimum, EU funding had to be cut to all projects that do not fully comply with EU legislation. The European environmental coalition further demanded that biodiversity considerations be taken into account at the earliest stage of work, calling for the establishment of "a strong mechanism" to resolve conflicts between TEN-T and Natura 2000 and a system that can scrutinise spending on transport projects to ensure that EU funding is not provided for projects that damage nature sites.
Meanwhile, on May 14 Bulgarian-language daily Dnevnik reported that the European Commission sent a letter to Bulgaria demanding within a month to receive an explanation on what is going on in Irakli, Emine and Kaliakra Natura 2000 areas at the Black sea coast, as well as in the Pirin Mountains. These are some of the areas in Bulgaria, where holiday properties are being built bans on construction.
