BRUSSELS - THE European Commission released on Friday 1.7 billion euros (S$3.35 billion) to finance 11 big rail projects with the bulk going to the 63-kilometre Brenner tunnel linking Austria and Italy.

At a conference in Verona, northern Italy, the European Union's executive arm decided to help finance the 11 programmes which mainly cover projects on the Berlin-Verona-Palermo and Lyon-Turin-Budapest rail routes.

The money is part of a budget of more than five billion euros for the 2007-2013 period which is supposed to be used to weed out bottle-necks and fill missing links in Europe's transport networks.

Nearly three quarters of those projects are rail infrastructure.

'Investing in key European transport infrastructure today is a demonstration that the European Union can respond to the economic crisis,' said EU Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani in a statement.

Of the total funds approved on Friday, 593 billion euros is slated for financing works on the Brenner base tunnel and a further 193 million euros is to be spent on studies for the tunnel. -- AFP