Videos

1. Why in your view is it important to invest in projects to plan and connect up Europe's high speed rail network?
   
2. And of course rail also has an environmental advantage over air. Is the environment an important aspect of your support for these projects?
   
3. One of the major elements of the HST projects is identifying bottlenecks and barriers and inefficiencies in the rail transport system, and investing to make it easier for people for ppl to -- for instance -- transfer from high speed trains to regional secondary trains and other transport modes. How important is that priority and how do you feel about the projects' achievements in doing that?
   
4. What is your impression of how things have come about - of the progress and achievements so far?
   
5. That is a strong endorsement. How will that translate into the commission's strategy going forward towards projects of this kind?
   
6. That is of course a key aspect of many Interreg projects and programmes - the sharing of knowledge, the propagation of lessons learned. How can we make sure that the lessons learned from a project like HST are properly propagated, used to their full value, for instance particularly in the EU's expansion east.
   
7. Investing in rail infrastructure, in connecting, in planning and strategy for high speed rail is a long term process. The landscape in Europe is constantly changing, politically, environmentally, socially; are the high speed train projects as relevant and important now as they were three years ago when they began?
   
8. The other aspect of this being a long term set of investments is that often the competitive and commercial priorities operate in shorter timescales. If the long term support of the EU is important to these goals, can we expect that support to continue in the long term?
   
9. Moving on to the Commission's big picture strategic view. A lot of the things that we have discussed have reflected on Lisbon, on Gothenburg, on cohesion. Where is the Commission's thinking going, what is the next stage as regards the kinds of projects that we are thinking about. Where will they fit in in the future?
   
10. And that of course must happen across borders, between regions. What is the importance of that trans-national dimension of the HST projects?
    
11. Would you like to conclude with a message to the many important stakeholders in rail who will be attending this conference?
    

1. Can you tell us how the European Parliament influences the development and particularly the delivery of transport that is of European economic importance?
   
2. So the European Parliament is able to identify sets of objectives and priorities for sustainable transport?
   
3. What you just said - the fact that the EU recognised the importance of that North-South access in the UK - leads me to the next question: is it important to connect people and regional economies along using high speed rail links, and what is at stake; what do we need to consolidate this?
   
4. So are you saying, looking into the future, into the next program period for European funding, that it would be of benefit if a partnership like the HST project has created, which is by its nature very much focused on the golden triangle as you said, should really look beyond the immediate boundary?
   
5. Do you think that transport is absolutely essential to the economic performance of a number of regions, whether they are on the periphery or in the centre, and enabling them to come together quicker, more efficiently, and then jointly be more competitive?
   
6. If I can sort of link what you just said on the environmental benefits. As recently as last week Sir Nicholas Stern was talking about the implications of climate change and that we rather need to do something now than wait. In addition, we face increasing congestion on the roads but also on the railway network. On top of that there is the growing uncertainty of energy supplies. What role do you see the European Parliament has in insuring that transport continues to connect us but as at the same time is much more integrated and much more energy efficient?
   
7. You make a number of very important points some of them we actually try to address through those two projects. One deals with integrating the primary high speed network with regional economies, regional communities and how we actually get them to access these transport links better and that could just been simple as footpaths or cycle paths or getting across a ring road into Ashford town centre or whatever.
   
8. Is it absolutely essential that we engage in the public sector with various partners and stakeholders and also in the private sector with operators of various transport modes across the whole transport link?
   
9. I think that was a very positive and encouraging message to our partners. Finally, perhaps if you want to send another message out for the future funding programme, what the absolute priorities will be in the next seven years and particularly what is the value of transnational working of getting together with our European partners jointly to tackle problems, challenges, and issues jointly across cultural divides, across linguistic challenges, across boundaries?
   
10. I think you have given us a formidable challenge for the next seven years to absolutely prove you wrong that it is possible for the railway industry and that is a message to our private sector parties, train operating companies but also those that are dealing with the railway infrastructure like in England Network Rail to prove to us that we are already in the 21st century and in order to be competitive in the global market place we can actually move well beyond that.