The Transport Regulation Authority has approved a updating of the regulations governing the awarding of services maritime passenger transport services to, from and to the islands and of the preparatory activities. The main provisions are relating to the tender procedures for awarding of services, with the aim of increasing the contestability of tenders and to ensure greater transparency of credit lines through wider availability of concession data, making the sector more attractive market participants, as well as content of the agreements between awarding bodies and operators, and also provides for the strengthening of monitoring and supervision activities by authority over the whole process.

The measure introduces standard schemes for calls for tenders and for conventions, overcoming the current heterogeneity of tenders prepared by the administrations, and an information framework minimum that the administrations will have to guarantee to operators to reduce the difficulties for operators in the comprehensive and comparable information and to facilitate the digitization of procedures.