The European Sea Ports Organisation (ESPO) has received eleven nominations for the eighteenth edition of the ESPO Award, which - recalled the President of the Association of European Ports, Eamonn O'Reilly, announcing the participants in this year's edition, "is was established in 2009 to promote social integration between ports and cities". This year's theme is the projects with port-city use and - O'Reilly pointed out - "offers ports the opportunity to concretely demonstrate their commitment to port-city integration. If the ports take Seriously port-city integration - he added - would wait to see port areas and infrastructures developed not only in the interest of transporting goods, but also in direct benefit of local port communities. The number and the The quality of this year's nominations demonstrate a great deal of commitment to this goal and show how the need for ports to actively work in favour of their most important stakeholders, is a priority in the plans and strategies of port development throughout Europe. Meeting the needs of local residents require innovation and trust to ensure that, while performing their main functions, ports should reverse the trend of recent decades, in which many ports have forgotten and alienated the communities that have well-founded and whose interests serve".

Among the eleven candidacies is that of the Italian Authority of the Port System of the Northern Adriatic Sea. The project The winner will be announced during the award ceremony and the gala dinner to be held on November 10 in Brussels.