At the beginning of the 1950s’ the European Community started to focus on the creation of an internal market. European policy focused on the free movement of people, capital, goods and services, identifying transport as one of the Community's main common policies. However, it made little sense to talk of a big European market unless the various regions and national networks were properly linked by modern and efficient infrastructure. But still in the 1980s' there was still no coherent common infrastructure policy.

Things changed radically with the 1992 Maastricht Treaty which represented the turning point of the European Transport and Infrastructure Policy. The Treaty introduced the concept of Trans-European Networks (TENs) under Articles 129b-129d of Title XII, which provided a legal basis for TENs for the first time: "To help achieve the objectives referred to in Articles 7a and 130a and to enable citizens of the Union, economic operators and regional and local communities to derive full benefit from the setting up of an area without internal frontiers, the Community shall contribute to the establishment and development of trans' European networks in the areas of transport, telecommunications and energy infrastructures."

The European Commission had developed broad guidelines for the identification of objectives, priorities, and projects of common interest for the three sectors concerned (Transports, Energy and Telecommunications). The European Parliament and the Council approved these guidelines after consultation with the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. Various actors from the political, industrial and financial market had a decisive role to put into practice the ideas that had been contemplated.

The documents included in these funds have a special focus (but not only) on the "Transports" sector of the TENs, and on some of the actors in its development, especially the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), the Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (FIAT), and the European Centre for Infrastructure Studies (ECIS), in the years 1985-2000.

The TENs fonds were property of Alfonso Sabatino, formerly FIAT manager and representative of Italy at ECIS, who collected them during his career and then deposited them at the HAEU.

Studies of Trans-European Networks (TENs). The structure of the sub-fonds reflects the original regrouping of the depositor.

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