Critical renegotiation triggers of European transport concessions

•Identification of renegotiation triggers of European transport PPPs.•Economic and legal environment strongly influences renegotiation likelihood.•PPP supporting policies contribute for better governance.•Greenfield projects and longer contracts reflect higher uncertainty in PPPs.

In this paper, we assess the critical factors for the renegotiation of transport infrastructure concessions. We depart from a literature review on the renegotiation of infrastructure concessions and of the main renegotiation triggers and the methodologies used to assess them. By collecting data from a total of 32 transport PPP projects, in 13 European countries, we identified a total of 37 renegotiations. Our findings corroborate the literature in that a country's economic and legal environment has an important impact on the likelihood of renegotiation. The occurrence of elections is shown to have an indirect impact on increasing renegotiations. Furthermore, both the uncertainty associated with developing new PPP projects with budgetary motivations, and the operational stages of long term contracts, play a critical role in contractual renegotiation.