3. NATIONAL INVESTMENTS IN IWT INFRASTRUCTURE

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• Infrastructure represents a basic need for reliable inland waterway transport. Yearly data for infrastructure maintenance, as well as infrastructure investments, are reported for Rhine and Danube countries.
• Shortfalls in data arise due to varying methodologies in data collection.
• The data presented allow for an analysis per country but do not allow the comparison of trends in maintenance and investment spendings between different countries. For instance, maintenance spending can vary greatly between countries due to the length and nature of the waterway as well as the number of constructions on this waterway.

 

INTRODUCTION

  • In order to ensure a year-round navigability, the state of the inland navigation transport network must enable efficient, reliable and safe navigation for users by ensuring minimum waterway parameters and levels of service (Good Navigation Status). To achieve this goal, IWT infrastructure needs to be constructed, maintained, and upgraded through investments within a coherent corridor vision. It must also consider the growing demand for fast, reliable, high-quality, seamless movement of goods and persons. In this regard, monitoring national investments in IWT infrastructure is essential.
  • Maintenance, rehabilitation, and regeneration are key actions towards inland navigation reliability and performance. Any financial support ensuring more efficient maintenance, rehabilitation and regeneration activities positively impact infrastructure. However, it should be borne in mind that these are long-running activities, part of an investment life cycle approach.17
  • Infrastructure spending can be broken down into two main categories: investment and maintenance spending.
  • Maintenance spending focuses on already existing infrastructure and its upkeep. Maintenance spending, such as that related to dredging campaigns to maintain guaranteed navigable channel depth, is however, as of today, not eligible for EU co-funding in the context of the Connecting Europe Facility II programme (CEF II). Today, it is the responsibility of Member States to maintain their inland navigation networks, core and comprehensive, which is crucial for the development of the sector. Nevertheless, it is important to note that maintenance spending can vary greatly from one country to another, depending on:
    – the length of the navigable waterway,
    – its nature (free-flowing or not) and,
    – the number of constructions on this waterway (locks and dams generally represent the most important expenditure items).
  • Investment spending embraces a new output in new projects such as the enlargement or upgrading of waterways. Such investments are eligible for co-funding at EU level, for instance via CEF II. In legal understanding, an investment must undergo an environmental impact assessment whereas maintenance spending is usually not tied to such legal requirements.
  • Investments in port infrastructure are not within the scope of this chapter.

 

SHORTCOMINGS RELATING TO DATA COLLECTION ON INFRASTRUCTURE SPENDING

  • It might be tempting to compare data between countries, but there are some important shortcomings to be discussed to allow for reasonable conclusions. Such shortcomings arise from differing methodologies of data collection and the definitions behind these, but also from differences regarding the types of waterways present in the countries. For example, countries with a high share of free-flowing rivers need a higher amount of maintenance activities than countries with a lower share in this regard. On the other hand, rivers which count numerous locks require high investment spending.
  • Regarding differing methodologies, infrastructure maintenance equipment is included for one country under infrastructure maintenance spending but might not be included in another country. This could also partly explain possible discrepancies that may exist between one data source and another. Due to these different methodologies and different types of waterways, it is more advantageous to shed light on the trend for each country. In addition, the differentiation between investment spending and maintenance spending is sometimes not available.
  • Another important aspect lies in the competent authorities for data collection. For instance, whereas in Croatia the hydrological institute is responsible for the data collection, in most parts of the Rhine and Danube countries it is the waterway administrations that are responsible.
  • Last but not least, it should be mentioned that depending on the inland water CEMT18 class, the entity responsible for managing infrastructure investment might vary, for instance, it could either be the national authority or the regional authorities. The infrastructure spending related to inland waterways that are under the responsibility of regional authorities, generally regional waterways of CEMT class III or below, might therefore not be reported in the national infrastructure spending data. For those countries that count numerous regional navigable waterways of CEMT class III or below, it is likely that the total amount of infrastructure spending reported in this chapter is underestimated. This would be the case for the Netherlands and Poland.
  • These observations call for improving the data collection process, perhaps through the development of harmonised criteria for reporting such infrastructure spending investments at European level.

 

OVERVIEW PER COUNTRY

 

    RHINE COUNTRIES

    • For the Rhine countries, relevant data regarding infrastructure maintenance and investment spending can be retrieved from the OECD. Due to the shortcomings explained in the above section, no country comparisons shall be made. This data serves to carry out a country trend analysis in the two given indicator variables. Note that data for the Netherlands, Switzerland and for infrastructure maintenance spending in Germany, is not available in the OECD data.
    • The OECD database encompasses both land and waterside infrastructures. Indeed, it is based on the OECD definition of inland waterway infrastructure (and related costs) which includes both landside and waterway-related components: “Infrastructure includes land, channels and permanent way constructions, buildings, navigation locks, mooring equipment, toll collection installations, as well as immovable fixtures, fittings and installations connected with them (signalisation, telecommunications, etc.) as opposed to IWT vessels”.19
    • Regarding infrastructure maintenance spending in Germany, national data on maintenance spending in waterway transport do not, in most cases, distinguish between inland and maritime waterways, which makes an analysis quite impossible.

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      TABLE 1: INLAND WATERWAY INFRASTRUCTURE MAINTENANCE SPENDING (IN MILLION EUROS)

      Country/Year2010201120122013201420152016201720182019202020212022
      Belgium65.058.071.066.027.082.0103.087.560.061.055.094.0n/a
      France60.061.061.061.060.059.859.662.265.465.164.265.268.2
      Germanyn/an/an/an/an/a n/an/an/an/an/an/an/an/a
      Luxembourg0.30.20.30.20.20.10.20.20.20.30.1n/an/a
      Netherlands544.0430.5346.5266.9291.9317.3398.4419.7411.1463.7480.9577.7635.2
      Switzerlandn/an/an/an/an/a n/an/an/an/an/an/an/an/a

      Source: OECD
       

      TABLE 2: INLAND WATERWAY INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT (IN MILLION EUROS)

      Country/Year2010201120122013201420152016201720182019202020212022
      Belgium154.0152.0152.0167.0103.0291.0225.0237.5197.0197.0249.0562.0n/a
      France253.2264.3236.0224.4180.0164.1192.335.1226.3163.0306.6349.5381.0
      Germany1,100.01,070.0780.0740.0780.0730.0780.0720.0760.01,000.01,220.01,090.01,270.0
      Luxembourg1.01.30.70.10.30.00.10.00.10.10.1n/an/a
      Netherlands252.0460.7470.6558.6589.7578.7357.9511.0430.5532.7555.7826.2810.3
      Switzerlandn/an/an/an/an/a n/an/an/an/an/an/an/an/a

      Source: OECD
       

    DANUBE COUNTRIES

    • For the Danube countries and Czech Republic, relevant data regarding infrastructure maintenance and investment spending in general can also be retrieved from the OECD database. In addition to the OECD data, more detailed data stemming from the FRMMP20 are also available, covering waterside infrastructure only (no landside infrastructure) but discrepancies between the OECD and the FRMMP data exist mainly because of differences in the methodology, scope and definition.

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      TABLE 3: INLAND WATERWAY INFRASTRUCTURE MAINTENANCE SPENDING (IN MILLION EUROS)

      Country/Year2010201120122013201420152016201720182019202020212022
      Austrian/a11.012.017.019.014.012.013.012.013.113.414.014.3
      Serbia13.323.017.616.517.329.828.732.935.343.332.630.540.6
      Slovakia2.02.03.04.09.03.70.37.11.8n/a2.02.03.0
      Republic of Moldova0.0n/an/an/an/a0.10.10.10.1n/an/an/an/a
      Hungary3.21.60.80.81.31.42.72.22.12.22.01.82.5
      Bulgaria1.01.51.01.01.01.01.31.43.43.63.63.12.6
      Croatia0.70.81.21.2n/an/an/an/an/an/an/an/an/a
      Czech Republic1.51.82.94.64.57.56.26.57.512.25.33.96.2

      Source: OECD
       

      TABLE 4: INLAND WATERWAY INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT (IN MILLION EUROS)

      Country/Year2010201120122013201420152016201720182019202020212022
      Austria11.02.03.011.010.02.02.03.03.04.53.74.37.0
      Serbia21.225.824.715.517.722.340.734.345.949.147.250.655.2
      Slovakia3.01.01.01.00.00.10.11.11.5n/a1.10.01.0
      Republic of Moldova0.00.70.20.10.10.10.10.10.1n/an/an/an/a
      Hungary0.80.20.010.10.02010.30.21.10.93.11.10.0
      Bulgaria0.00.00.00.00.51.30.00.20.00.01.00.00.0
      Croatia2.63.53.31.7n/an/an/an/an/an/an/an/an/a
      Czech Republic57.822.317.27.29.615.19.87.22.851.155.530.224.1
      Romania423.5519.0279.5268.1314.1505.9236.9105.1189.7n/an/an/an/a

      Source: OECD
       
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