Euroland Made Concrete

Feelings run high where a new line brings no obvious benefit to locals. "The train isn't even going to stop here," grumbles Rudi Nevens, a florist in the Belgian town of Licent, now enduring three years of construction work on the Brussels-Cologne link. "We'll just have to watch it pass us by all day." Governments also complain. They're happy enough to take EU money for railway lines or highways that bring political or economic rewards at home. (Many of the superprojects would have gone ahead even without EU funds.) But progress has been slow when the bills are steep--Brussels usually provides only a maximum of 10 percent of a project's cost--and the returns look distant.

The biggest challenge is yet to come. The countries of central and eastern Europe are queuing up for EU membership. Among the consequences: a flood of extra traffic as they increase their trade with new partners to the west. Says Wolfgang Hager, a transport expert at the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies, "Enlargement [of the EU] will be identified not just with dirty foreigners but with dirty foreigners in dirty trucks making it impossible for people to get to their holiday homes." What's more, the newcomers' own infrastructure is in no state to take the extra loads that prosperity could bring. That's why Brussels is channeling investment into another parallel network--20,000 kilometers of railways and almost the same distance in road--that will beef up links between Moscow and the Polish-German border. Will such outlay really be repaid in closer cross-border ties? As Frank Paaskesen, a Danish IT consultant heading home across Oresund Sound on the present hydrofoil service, says, "For us, having the link is like regaining a lost friend." Spoken like a true European.

Trains, Planes and Automobiles

The Trans-European Transport network master plan is aimed at knitting together Europe. Amounts in millions of euros.

1. 550-km rail line linking Berlin and Verona. 15,102 euros