For the Committee of the Regions of the EU a new European authority for the ports is not necessary



Yesterday the Commission for the Policies of Territorial Cohesion of the Committee of the Regions (CdR) of the European Union has adopted a project of seeming on the regulations proposal that at the market institutes a picture for the access of the harbour services and the transparency financial institution in the ports.

The project of seeming, that we publish in attached and that it is illustrated by the reporter Alessandro Cosimi (PSE), mayor of Livorno and vice president of the Committee of the E regions president Anci Tuscany, will be voted in plenary to December and asks that the normative participation for the EU lasci adapted margins the Member States in order to answer to the specific requirements of their ports. Currently, in fact - it has found the CdR - the managerial models extremely are differentiated and rigid rules risk to penalize or to favor local situations hindering a competition balanced between the European ports of call and the necessary recovery of efficiency. Between the faced more delicate aspects in the opinion - it has explained the Committee of the Regions - there is the urgency to clarify the norm on the aids of been about to infrastructures, creating a more favorable context for the investments. E regions cities moreover are worried by the risks of increase in weight of the bureaucratic implementations legacies to the creation of a new European authority for the ports proposed from the EU commission.

"The project of seeming - it has clarified Alessandro Cosimi - test to define the just balance between the necessity to respect the local experiences and that to guarantee, at the same time, an adequate normative homogeneity for the harbour field. He is obvious therefore that the activities that shape as services publics, nautical services technical - mooring, dredging etc - and all go excluded from the field of application of the new rules all the service operations that, to our warning, must be governed from the competent national organisms in a relationship of collaboration with the local authorities. We must in any case avoid an ulterior bureaucratization of the field, using better this that already exists. Not servants therefore a new European authority".

"There is I confront opened - it has continued the mayor of Livorno - also on the choice of the normative instrument to use. The Commission proposes regulations, that is a tightening system of common norms, while we incline we consider necessary to guarantee greater margins of participation to the Member States, result that can be obtained opting for a directive. There is also who would want to limit lessened the participation of Brussels and asks to stop himself to the lines guides. If but the objective of the Commission is of having more competitive ports we consider that regulations are able to not to guarantee homogenous conditions of competition".

"The picture - it has specified Cosimi - is a lot differentiated; in some Countries the ports, even if they are to governmental capital, are managed with forms of governance many neighbors to those of the private sector, with an action freedom that is completely various from that normally granted to the public authorities of management. In order to make to complete to all a step ahead we must face the normative issue, to increase the transparency of the aids of State - that it will be the decisive topic - and to promote the infrastructural investments, clarifying that our ports the terminal and the gate one of the transeuropee nets of transport TRY and not disconnected islands, abandoned. This last topic places a great on a national level Italian problem, that of politics for the ports that selections the investments and them east in a total strategy. Today all make what it seems to it, we must instead integrate and diversify the offer of services, without to depress the will to invest. An example on all: if we had to complete all the terminals containers planned today in Italy we would have an able offer to manage per year 25 million teu. Today 10 circulate some; one is estimated that they will double from here to 2030, but we not then can generate a sovracapacità of offer. For being competitive it must star within a well-advised programming, that he guarantees an adequate use of the money publics".

According to the mayor of Livorno, moreover, "a new directive for the harbour field would have to be integrated with the plans of the EU in the field of the "blue increase", the sustainable transport and the freeways of the sea. It would above all serve - it has specified - a specific participation for the field "ro-ro", the ferries that transport goods and passengers. Draft of the most important modality for many of the populations more weak people, for example for the insulare areas, so as for populations of Third-country of the Mediterranean who crosses the most delicate political phase. We have asked the Commission to take care of this issue, because, also having excluded the traffic fleeting from the fields of participation of the new rules, it must harmonize the regulations to level EU because only so we can indeed diminish the transport on rubber".

"The other great chapter that regards the sustainability - has added Cosimi - it is that relative one to the impact on the marine atmosphere of the dredgings and the participations of harbour infrastructuring. It is fundamental that the decisions on this forehead are solid in public hand because objective they inhere to the quality of the atmosphere and the life of our communities. For example in a city as Livorno, with an important port goods, a dredging operation would give to breath to the traffic containers, but besides the goods several there are also the fishermen. If all the sediments of a city been born in the ‘500 and become were deposited in front of the port industrial in the ‘700, it is obvious that the peach activities would be killed. It is clearly that decisions of this type must be managed from the public sector, holding you anticipate, besides the closely economic aspects, social dynamics and the quality of the cohabitation".