Gallanti: the P3 trust Network excludes from the main lines of traffic many ports of the South Europe



Of the weapons of which the European ports, and in particular the Harbour Authorities, can be made use in order to face the challenges taxes from the recent developments in the market of the line services, and in particular from the consolidation to the summit of the field represented from the new shipowning alliance P3 Network constituted from Maersk Line, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) and CMA CGM ( on 18 June 2013), Mediterranean Euro has been discussed today to Livorno in the course of the Forum that has been organized from the Leighorn Harbour Authority.

"The three great colossus, Maersk, MSC and CMA CGM - it has been the observation of the president of the Harbour Authority of Livorno, Giuliano Gallanti - have decided to form a trust and to exclude from the main lines of traffic many ports of the South Europe. The risk is that the entire Mediterranean is cut out from the choices of the big ones operator". Gallanti has invited the representatives of the EU commission and the harbour world to put in field a sinergica and shared action: "I have the conviction - it has explained - than in this historical phase the game of the free market are able to not to resolve the problems that we have of forehead. We must indeed begin to speak about collaboration without this means to construct of the trusts". "We do not know - it has added - on which bases the P3 has decided to include sure marine ports of call and to exclude of others. It comes to me but pointed out spontaneous that in some determined cases ports have been chosen also because they had a pertaining terminal or in concession to one of the three groups". "We will see - it has continued Gallanti - if the organisms of control on the competition will not have nothing to say. But what it counts it is that the Member States define of the synergies in order to contain or to reject the perverse effects of what is happening".

The president of the European Sea Ports Organisation (ESPO), Santiago Garcia-Milà, has expressed the point of view of the association on the challenges that the EU will have to face in the short term: "we believe - it has declared - that effective European politics must be played on five great guiding lines: efficient connections with the hinterland, simplification of the procedures for the control of the goods, autonomy financial institution for the agencies of governance of the ports, ecosostenibilità and relationships of neighborliness with the Countries of the Side South of the Mediterranean". "The main ways from Asia to the East Coast - it has found Thousands - pass also through the countries of the Africa North. The Italian, French and Spanish ports of call are not distant that little miles from Morocco, from Tunisia or Egypt, but still do not succeed to benefit completely of this vicinity".

Gallanti has restated the invitation turned from more parts to the European Union so that the freeways of the sea are extended also to the extra-EU countries: "some students - he has remembered - support that unavoidably in the next few years the development of the continent African will have an impetuous overhong similar to that Chinese. We must understand that gone to play, if to begin a competition crowds in order to buy up everyone to us a south the side market share of, or if to construct together with Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, a Mediterranean net that makes of our basin strategic a geopolitical area".

"Today - José Anselmo has explained, coordinator advisor for the freeways of the sea of the EU commission - the EU has moved own attention from politics of bilateral type to one of horizontal type: the trans-European and trans-Mediterranean ties are more and more important, but they must be the ports to knowledge where and with who to connect itself. In so far as, policies of vituous cooperation are got ahead by Genoa, and we expect important results also from Livorno, that it has known to play with the time a more and more strategic role in the within of the important promotion projects of technological innovation, as the Port Community System. We want to reassure to you - it has emphasized - than the EU will support, also through the investments promoted from BEAUTIFUL (the European Investment Bank), all those actions that view-finder to create political and commercial interconnections with the neighbors it are not European".

Less worried for the impact on the ports of the new shipowning alliances Victor Schoenmakers appears, director of the European and international transactions of the Port of Rotterdam Authority: "the birth of the P3 - it has commented - seems me a logical consequence, above all if the pressures are considered that the operators must face nowadays. As actors of the market we must react in order not to succumb: this means that the ports must, yes, to respect the contained norms in the treatys of operation of the European Union, but - but it has evidenced - us they do not have to be prescrittive rules that reduce our ability to negotiation". The reference is to the new rough draft of European regulations on the access at the market of the harbour services, than in sure points it limits or it inhibits the ability to the Harbour Authorities to freely agree with the shipowner the rates that must be to pay for the use of a harbour infrastructure.

"The moment in which we find - has agreed mayor of Livorno, Alessandro Cosimi, that it is delegated to the Portualità of the National Association Common Italians - it is delicate and it demands by the European Union a clear unit of attempts. Sul regulations EU is a debate a lot locked between who it supports that the intentional reform from commissioner Kallas bridles the legal autonomy of the agencies of governance of the ports and who instead thinks that it is a good law. Italy is in the middle of all this, but it will not be able to never face in a serious way so important issues if before it will not be equipped of an only cabin of direction".

According to the city council member to Infrastructures of the Tuscany Region, Vincenzo Ceccarelli, "Livorno and the system of the Tuscan ports must assume a more and more strategic role in the basin of the Mediterranean, also in consideration of what it is the today strategic topic of the so-called naval gigantism. The question that is made us - has found - it is if it is an opportunity or a threat. The answer creed is in the choices that are made in taking note of this situation. The port of Livorno, has great perspectives of development, but we must work in order to adapt it and to modernize it".