On 29 August 2023, the European Cyclists' Federation (ECF) published an insightful new policy brief, presenting key figures for investments in cycling EU Structural Funds. Approximately €3.21 billion is set to be invested in cycling projects across Europe in the present 2021-2027 EU structural funding period. This would be a 30% increase compared to the previous 2014-2020 financial period and should finance the construction of about 12,000 km of cycling infrastructure. In an optimistic scenario, where Managing Authorities adjust their planned investments mid-way in the cycle in favour of cycling as it already happened during the 2014-2020 period, even as much as €4-4.8 billion in Structural Funds could be unlocked for cycling projects, ECF calculated.

The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) remains by far the single largest structural fund relevant for cycling investments, followed by the Cohesion Fund and the Just Transition Fund (JTF). The JTF in principle is open to all EU Member States, but only two countries – Poland and Czech Republic – make use of it for cycling investments. Interreg is part of the ERDF fund.

Big discrepancies between EU Member States

Behind this positive overall trend in unlocking more EU investments for cycling hide big discrepancies between Member States. Whereas some countries are set to invest considerably more in cycling, such as Czech Republic, Estonia and Lithuania, others have become less ambitious when it comes to using EU Structural Funds for cycling, notably Spain and Portugal.

These are some of the ECF key findings related to the 2021-2027 financial period:

• In absolute numbers, Poland will be the biggest beneficiary with €780 million in investments, followed by Czech Republic (€409 million), Italy (€376 million) and Hungary (€300 million). See graph below. These four countries account for 60% of total “planned” investments.
• The largest investors measured in Euro per capita are Lithuania and Estonia with both investing €46.6, followed by Czech Republic (€38.8), Slovenia (€35.4) and Hungary (€30.9).
• A perhaps fairer comparison between investment levels of countries is to examine the share cycling receives from the total Structural Funds that is allocated to each country. In this case, the largest share for cycling occurs in Lithuania (1.66%), closely followed by Slovenia (1.65%) and Czech Repubic (1.58%). Estonia (1.19%) and Hungary (1.18%) also top the 1% threshold.

2014-2020 period: Steady increase in investments, but challenges remain with spending the money

In its policy brief ECF also identified a big discrepancy between ambition and implementation. Out of the €2.43 billion Member States have planned for cycling from EU Structural Funds in the 2014-2020 period, only €1.64 billion (67%) was spent at the end of 2022. This is a similar spending rate compared with urban transport infrastructure but low when compared with other types of road infrastructure investments where spending rates are between 84-111% of original commitments. However, performance differs a lot between Member States.

• Some countries have already over-spent on their commitments, including Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovenia.
• Cyprus, Greece, France, Germany, Slovakia and Spain all have low spending levels of less than 40%.
• Italy trails behind, having spent just 17% of their planned investments.

Member States have only a couple of months left to close that gap: Projects finalised by 31 December 2023 are still eligible to receive funding from the 2014-2020 period. The final spending figures for the 2014-2020 funding period should be published sometime in 2024.

All data presented in this report has been retrieved from the European Commission’s “Cohesion Open Data Platform”.

You can download the full ECF Policy Brief here.