The MIT starts a consultation in order to define the requirements of public service in the marine connections with the islands



In sight of the imminent summery season, that it is the period of peak of the activities of the navigation companies that operate services with the islands, the effects on the field of the transports of the limitations adopted from the Italian government in order to face the caused sanitary emergency from the coronavirus pandemic have carried a great uncertainty on the outcome of the resumption of the tourist season. The uncertainty ulteriorly is fed by the stop series and go tax from the governmental administration and from the regional institutions to the reactivation of the marine services for the passengers and to this the protests of part of the industry shipowning for the green light to the development of the services given initially from the Ministry of Infrastructures and the Transports to the single marine services for the transport of passengers carried out in the within of the regime of territorial continuity have joined, with critics also in order to have postponed the expiration of the specific Convention between the State and Tirrenia - Italian Company of Navigation (CIN) until and not beyond on July 18, 2021, as established with the so-called decree-law "I throw again on 19 May".

Now the Ministry has started a consultation on the transport service is of passengers who of goods with the greater and smaller islands whose scope - the warning of beginning of the consultation explains - is face to the "definition of the requirements of public service and to the next verification of market, in order to ascertain the subsistence of an economic interest of the operators to the supply of services in coherent amounts and qualities with the requirements of public service in regime of free market". The objective - it has specified the MIT - is "to acquire suitable elements to ulteriorly circumstantiate the requirements of potentially deserving mobilities of protection".

The consultation does not involve the companies of navigation directly up to now engaged in the development of these marine connections but the associations of consumers, users and representations of the active enterprises in the fields of the logistics and the transport goods to which the compilation of a questionnaire and the communication of other eventual ulterior observations, indications is demanded and proposals that will have to reach the Ministry within next the 25 june.

The MIT has specified that "to valley of the consultations as above it will be proceeded to the definition of the requirements of public service and to the next verification of market, in order to ascertain the subsistence of an economic interest of the operators to the supply of services in coherent amounts and qualities with the requirements of public service in regime of free market". The precise warning that, "in case of outcome negative, also partial, of such verification will become by this administration the introduction of the measures indicated from Regolamento EEC 3577/92 and cited deliberation 22/2019, in the respect of the principles of publicity and transparency necessary and preserving, to light of the principle of proportionality, the maximum level of possible competition". The deliberation to which reference is made is that on March 14, 2019 of the Authority of Regulation of the Transports (ART) that it introduces measures for the definition of the notices of contest for the allocation of the marine services of transport of passengers with the islands(on 22 March 2019).

In the questionnaire one wonders among other things if, relatively to specific marine connections, "the free market can assure the objective of territorial continuity currently persecuted through the Convention", if "it considers that the categories of passengers who currently benefit of tariff regimes facilitated (residents) must be widened", if the "enforced facilitated rates are adapted", if "it considers that the ordinary rates currently applied to the passengers and car to the continuation are adequately accessible to the user", if, "regarding the transport of the goods, it considers that the current rates are adapted" and if it considers that the connection services offered they are adapted relatively to their frequency, to the times of crossing and to the offered services it is on board of the ships that to earth.