The Connecting Europe Facility should be created to develop transnational energy, transport and telecommunication infrastructures:

The financial envelope of €29, 2 billion (instead of the €50 billion forecasted by the Commission) should be divided as such: €23 billion for transport, €5 billion for energy and €1 billion for telecommunications (transferred from Cohesion Fund – instead of the 9,2 billion initially planned by the Commission)

The commissioner in charge of the digital agenda, Neelie Kroes, stated “she was disappointed” by the cut and claimed there won’t be any new broadband investment from the Connecting Europe Facility funding. She also said that the 1 billion that remain will be used at least for the following digital services:

• E-invoicing: this program should facilitate electronic transfer of invoicing information (billing and payment) between business partners.

• E-procurement: this program should provide the public sector with an interoperable EU-wide system to enable companies to respond to tenders and to sign documents on the internet from any Member-State.

Note that 3 large-scale infrastructure projects should be financed under this program:

• Galileo (satellite navigation system for 6,3 billion)

• ITER (experimental fusion reactor for 2,7 billion)

• GMES (security-related geospatial information for 3,8 billion)

For more information on the Connecting Europe Facility, click here 
To get more details of the reaction of the digital commissioner, follow this link