The High Level Group was established in September 2004 to outline the most promising ways of transport communications development in Europe after the EU's expansion last year due to new members. In a more general sense, the High Level Group has been designed to draw up a long-term strategy for the development of an intercontinental transport infrastructure in Europe and Asia, the Middle East and Northern Africa for the next 15-20 years. Therefore, the High Level Group incorporates, apart from the EU member-states, also all the countries of Europe, the Trans-Caucasus, the Middle East and Northern Africa-in all, 53 nations. Russia, a bridge between Europe and Asia, has been allotted a special role in this model.
The High Level Group tenure is to expire in October 2005 with the presentation of a joint report recommending priority transport infrastructure projects. Five regional groups, with Russia represented in two of them, that is northeast Europe and Black Sea ones, have been set up within the High Level Group orbit to assess and select such projects.
Russia is expecting the future list of priority pan-European corridors to include the three corridors (Nos 1, 2 and 9), out of the general European number of nine, that are running across the territory of Russia, as well as transport axes connecting these corridors between themselves and with the trans-Siberian railway stretching to the Pacific ocean.
For route No.1 "Via-Ganzeatica", the Russian transport ministry and the Kaliningrad region's administration have compiled a plan of action for the construction of one of its two offshoots: Riga-Kaliningrad-Gdansk.
Corridor No.2: Berlin-Warsaw-Minsk-Moscow-Nizhny Novgorod. Its managing committee, when convened for its 8th session in Berlin in the middle of May, 2003, supported a Russia-suggested project of extending the corridor for another 2,000 kilometers as far as the Urals capital of Yekaterinburg.
In January 1995, Moscow was the venue of a ceremony which initialed a Memorandum on mutual understanding between the European Union and the countries concerned (Finland, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Lithuania, Rumania and Bulgaria) about the development of trans-European transport corridor No.9 which links North European nations with the Black Sea countries. Work is underway to extend the corridor's Russian strip southward toward Novorossiisk and Astrakhan with exits to the biggest Russian harbors on the Black, Azov and Caspian sea coasts. The end of last year was marked by the launch of a railway connecting the Olya port on the Caspian coast with the main line.
Russia wants to develop its national transport infrastructure in harmony with the relevant efforts of its neighbors in Europe and Asia, according to Igor Levitin. This implies the time of implementing major projects, their parameters, financial terms and attraction of cargo freight traffic. Russia's transport strategy for a period ending in 2020, adopted by the Russian government, devotes much space to the development of international transport corridors and, in general, to an enlargement of the country's transit potential. The extension of international transport corridors is one of the tasks set by the Russian president to the government in his address to the parliament.
In its work, the High Level Group is largely assisted by such international financial institutions as the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the European Investment Bank. Therefore the Russian minister and the high-ranking EU official discussed not only priority directions and projects for the evolution of transport infrastructure in Europe and Asia, but also long-term Russia-EU investment plans. In this respect, mention was made of a memorandum on long-term cooperation, signed recently in Moscow by EBRD First Vice-President Noreen Doyle and Russian Railways President Gennady Fadeyev.
