The deadline for the presentation of National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRP) is approaching fast. How do cycling investments feature in Member States’ draft plans?

EU Member States are currently preparing their plans and outlining priorities for the funds that will be provided under the Recovery and Resilience Facility, part of the EU’s €750 billion COVID-19 pandemic recovery plan, the NextGenerationEU. Together with partners in the cycling industry, ECF is working hard to ensure that cycling will benefit from these substantial investments. But we also need your help.

Member States are expected to finalise their plans by the end of April 2021. Some have already submitted their drafts (Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden), some are re-drafting it after receiving a negative response from the European Commission (Czech Republic, Romania and Slovenia), and some have yet to submit theirs (Austria, Estonia, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands and Poland). In the meantime, elections in some countries may affect the content and timing of the recovery plans.

To analyse how prominently cycling investments and strategies feature in these plans, ECF has done an extensive review of the 15 NRRP drafts currently available online, searching specifically for cycling-related content. Following the cycling boom of 2020, our findings reveal that many European governments are starting to recognise the importance of cycling investments.

Cycling in National Recovery and Resilience Plans

Searching for direct references to cycling investments and plans in the 15 reviewed draft plans, we found that the most detailed cycling plans are coming from Belgium, Italy and Latvia. These include planning investments for a unified and safe bicycle infrastructure network (local and regional) that’s integrated into the transport system and supports multimodality.

Notably, Belgium and its regions decided, following input from Flemish ECF member Fietsersbond, among others, to accelerate investments in bicycle infrastructure to eliminate missing links in the regional bicycle network and ensure lighting of cycle paths. The Belgian recovery plan is the only one so far giving special attention to bicycle highways.

Italy plans a deeper integration of cycling within the transport system, with 1,000 km of urban and metropolitan cycle paths and 1,626 km of tourist cycle paths. The latter are especially within the “Paths of History” initiative, which aims to support slow tourism in Italy and generate new areas of attraction with a focus on sustainability and authenticity. Moreover, it is the only plan so far explicitly referring to the improvement of bike parking areas in railway stations.

Latvia insists on the development of cycling infrastructure for daily mobility with a unified, uninterrupted network to ensure local and neighbourhood connectivity. The purpose is to integrate public transport, cycling infrastructure and micro-mobility to serve the last mile. It is also the only plan so far to mention integration with the EuroVelo network.

Dedicated Funds

Having a closer look at how much Member States are planning to spend on cycling, not much information is available yet. The share of funds allocated to sustainable mobility in general has been announced in some countries (Romania: €9.7 billion; Italy €7.55 billion; Poland €6 billion; Portugal €1 billion; France €1.2 billion to cycling and public transport), while funds specifically earmarked for bicycle infrastructure have been clearly stated only by Belgium (€400 million in Flanders and €58 million in and around Brussels) and Slovakia (€100 million in a recent declaration by the Prime Minister).

Opportunities to Improve

Comparing the NRRP drafts and the guidelines of ECF and Cycling Industries Europe on how to integrate cycling proposals in the recovery plans, a few things can be noted:

• Cycling infrastructure: We see seven Member States explicitly mentioning cycling in their plans (Belgium, France, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia). These become eleven if we also consider indirect mentions of cycling, for example as “sustainable mobility improvements”. This is encouraging, and we hope to see more cycling in the other NRRPs soon.
• E-bikes access fund: Portugal is the only country mentioning e-bikes purchase incentives when speaking about past sustainable mobility initiatives that should be continued. Germany has €3.2 billion dedicated to purchase premiums for electric and hybrid cars; ECF recommends that e-bikes and cargo bikes are included in these premiums.
• Bicycle tourism: So far, only Italy has dedicated a section to bicycle tourism in its draft plan. We hope that other Member States will also use the opportunity to promote cycle tourism to EU destinations.

The International Transport Forum: “Invest in Cycling Infrastructure!”

Our conclusion from the first review of Member States’ NRRPs is that the importance of cycling investments is starting to be recognised across Europe, perhaps as a result of the cycling boom seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, a lot more can and will hopefully be done by Member States. In its latest COVID-19 Transport Brief, the International Transport Forum (ITF) states that investments in infrastructure are among the most well-proven and effective ways of successfully boosting the economy during and after a crisis. In particular, policy makers should prioritise projects that can deliver jobs and growth in the short- and medium-term (for instance through maintenance rather than mega-projects that take too much time to plan and execute) and decentralise initiatives to enhance the speed of project delivery. In our opinion, implementing cycling infrastructure projects is an easy way for public authorities to comply with these ITF recommendations.

The ITF brief also specifically suggests investments in active mobility as a good option. Interventions of reallocation of road space to public and active modes are not necessarily capital-intensive, but according to the ITF they employ local labour, advance decarbonisation and improve social equity.

Furthermore, a recent study by the Wuppertal Institute found that investments in cycling bring multiple beneficial effects in several areas, including the economy; in 2019 in Germany alone, cycling brought a yearly turnover of almost €40 billion and was linked to 281,000 jobs.

In other words, there are no excuses for Member States not to use the opportunity of the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility and the National Recovery and Resilience Plans to substantially upgrade cycling investments. To help achieve this, ECF works closely together with partners in the cycling industry, ECF members and networks.

If you have more information about a specific national plan or want help to reach out to your national government, please do not hesitate to contact us. Last call: 30 April, 2021!