It ensures that operators can cover costs that are efficiently incurred and receive an appropriate return on invested capital.

The return on capital allowed ex ante for investment into NGA networks should strike a balance between on the one hand providing adequate incentives for undertakings to invest (implying a sufficiently high rate of return) and promoting allocative efficiency, sustainable competition and maximum consumer benefits on the other (implying a rate of return that is not excessive).

The rate of return into education at pre-school age, for example, is higher than the rate of return from investing the same amounts in the longer term in financial institutions.

Infrastructure investment costs, calculated as the costs of constructing the infrastructure concerned and expressed as an annual figure (including an appropriate rate of interest on the invested capital) throughout the design lifetime of the infrastructure, must be allocated in proportion to the number of annual vehicle-km for each vehicle category.

Effective patent protection is a crucial incentive to RD and innovation and an essential means of guaranteeing return on investment.

18. While welcoming the broadly positive assessment by the Court of Auditors of the Commission's management of the ECSC budget in the financial year 1999, as well as the Commission's undertaking on the provision of information concerning the average rate of yield on liquid assets in the ECSC's annual report from the financial year 2000 onwards, stresses the necessity for the Commission to ensure maximum transparency in the disclosure of data affecting the value of the ECSC's assets, particularly in the approach to the expiry of the ECSC Treaty and the creation of the Research Fund for Coal and Steel.