Members of two European Parliament committees are expected to back a text supporting EU spending on roads, viaducts and access routes to airports and ports that can be used in peacetime but serve for rapid troop and equipment movements in a crisis.
Warsaw hopes to be the main beneficiary of the fund.
According to public broadcaster Polish Radio, citing European Commission officials, three of the four planned military transport corridors run through Poland, converging near its eastern border.
“These funds will be used for access roads to airports, new roads, viaducts and access to ports,” Polish MEP Dariusz Joński, a co-rapporteur on the report, told Polish Radio.
“We can not only build but also modernize many roads and make ourselves more resilient to the attacks we have faced,” he added, referring to recent sabotage of rail tracks in Poland.
EU governments will ultimately decide the size of the “military Schengen” envelope and which projects are financed, but the Parliament report is intended to increase pressure on member states to prioritize military mobility.
The vote comes as the European Parliament in Strasbourg prepares to debate “continuous violations of airspace and sabotage of critical infrastructure by Russia and Belarus,” focusing in part on the destruction of Polish railway infrastructure.
The debate is scheduled for Wednesday.
Andrzej Halicki, head of the Polish delegation in the center-right European People’s Party, called the incidents an unprecedented step in the hybrid war that Russia has declared on Europe and said the EU cannot remain silent.
On Thursday, the Parliament’s security and defense committee will follow up with a debate on “the constant threat of Russian hybrid war – recent sabotage attacks in Poland.”
(jh/gs)
Source: Polskie Radio 24