EUROPEAN FINANCIAL SUPPORT AND SUCCESFUL ROAD PPP PROJECTS

Abstract

The EU has been promoting the use of PPPs in order to accelerate the development of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) for ensuring economic, social and territorial cohesion and increasing accessibility throughout the Union. To encourage the use of PPPs, the European Commission has put several financing mechanisms at the disposal of the Member States, including a series of innovative financial instruments developed along with the European Investment Bank. The Bank has in turn played a major role in the promotion and financing of PPPs across the EU. The paper undertakes a review of the main financial instruments developed by the EU that are available to PPPs so as to determinate to what extent the European financial support has been channelled to road projects under that scheme in Spain. On the basis of the results obtained, a multiple regression model has been developed to analyse whether the PPP projects which enjoyed the financial support of the European Union tend to be significantly more successful from an economic point of view. The paper concludes that there is a positive correlation between receiving European financial support and the success of the PPP road projects.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/CIT2016.2016.3492