An extensive email exchange has been taking place with both the London office of the European Union (and Brussels) in respect of the non-transparency where notification of information about the various projects that are announced – especially with regard to those from TEN-T.

A case in point is the scheme to enhance the ports of Dover and Calais, where the EU is contributing €14,261,536 out of a total project cost of €72,027,960. This begged the question of exactly how much was coming, respectively, from the United Kingdom and France to which I was informed the EU did not hold that information – something which is totally illogical and also farcical – and that I should contact the relative port authorities (I have emailed the Dover contact provided by the EU but to date no response has been received).

Anyways, eventually an ‘EU response’ was received from Jeffrey Lamb, Research Assistant

Political Section, Representation of the European Commission in the UK, as follows:

I have now received a reply from our colleagues responsible for the management of the Europa server, which reads as follows.

The central point you raise – that all information relevant to a particular project should be easily accessible alongside the project page itself – is completely valid.

This is exactly the type of issue that we are tackling in the European Commission’s ongoing Digital Transformation project, which aims to:

help people find the information they are looking for quickly and easily

make the European Commission’s online communication more coherent

make it easier for people to understand what the European Commission does

save money with better online communications.

We would request your patience while this extensive overhaul is ongoing, and encourage you to follow progress on the team’s blog at http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/eu-digital/home_en.

It would have been even better if they had thought about this from the outset – but then when have bureaucrats ever considered how to save money when said money is not their own?