The European Commission gave its green light for the public financing from France and Spain to the Fres Mos project. It will link the French port of Nantes-Saint Nazaire with the Spanish port of Gijon, and will be operated by GLD Atlantique. This Motorways of the Sea project will also receive an EU grant in the framework of the 2009 Marco Polo II call for proposals, in which the Commission selected twenty-two projects with overall funding of $92.3m. With these projects, the Commission expects to shift a total of 16.8 billion tonne/kilometres of freight away from the roads. The EU Marco Polo II program selects each year a range of projects that aim to shift freight from the road onto more environmentally-friendly transport modes, such as railway, inland waterway and maritime transport.