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Glossary of summaries

Connecting Europe Facility (CEF)

The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) is an EU mechanism that groups EU financing for the three sets of trans-European infrastructures — energy, transport and digital — into one fund.

Projects under the trans-European networks (TENs) provide the missing links in the EU’s energy, transport and digital backbone.

Title XVI of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU provides the legal basis for TENs. TENs projects are partly funded by the EU and partly by the EU countries involved.

The facility was originally created for the 2014-2020 period to stimulate investment in the TENs and to leverage funding from both the private and public sectors. It has been extended for the 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework period. The amounts allocated to the programme from the EU budget are as follows.

  • Transport: €11.4 billion (plus a transfer of €10 billion from the Cohesion Fund), of which €1.4 billion is for the major missing cross-border railway links between cohesion countries.
  • Energy: €5.2 billion.
  • Digital: €1.8 billion.

The CEF’s specific objectives are as follows.

  • Transport
    • To develop projects of common interest relating to efficient, interconnected and multimodal networks and infrastructure for smart, interoperable, sustainable, inclusive, accessible, safe and secure mobility.
    • To adapt parts of the trans-European transport network for a dual use of the transport infrastructure to improve both civilian and military mobility.
  • Energy
    • To develop projects of common interest in order to further integrate the EU’s internal energy market and the interoperability of networks across borders and sectors, thus facilitating the decarbonisation of the economy, promoting energy efficiency and ensuring security of supply.
    • To facilitate cross-border cooperation in the area of energy, including renewable energy.
  • Digital
    • To develop projects of common interest relating to the deployment of safe and secure very-high-capacity digital networks and 5G systems, to the increased resilience and capacity of digital backbone networks on EU territories by linking them to neighbouring territories, and to the digitalisation of the transport and energy networks.

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