Core Network of Seaports trump card for Europe’s competitiveness and sustainability

The European Sea Ports Organisation finalised yesterday its input for the Commission’s consultation on the revision of the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T).

The future TEN-T guidelines are expected to put seaports and their hinterland connections centre-stage together with other nodal points such as inland ports and airports.

“This is a very welcome development“, said ESPO Chairman Victor Schoenmakers, “but if we want to make real progress, we have to focus on European added value and identify genuine pan-European priorities. Within the competitive landscape of the port sector this is easier said than done. I am therefore very pleased that we found an approach to bring seaports to the forefront of TEN-T in a way that every European port can develop according to its own potential.”

The key to the ESPO approach lies in the ‘dual layer’ planning proposal of the Commission. This consists of a core network and an underlying comprehensive network.

For ESPO, every European seaport engaged in international traffic should a priori form part of the comprehensive network. Port-related projects should be proposed in a bottom-up manner by Member States and selected on the basis of clear and transparent criteria. “The criteria contained in the present TEN-T guidelines form a good starting point”, said Victor Schoenmakers, “From our side, we will undertake a survey among all our members to identify the most significant kind of common infrastructure and other bottlenecks that occur in European ports. We hope this will provide useful background material for the Commission and Member States.”

The core network should be future-oriented and be sufficiently robust to anticipate future needs and trends for the next 10 to 20 years. ESPO believes that ports in the core network should have potential for decarbonisation and limitation of external costs, have a gateway function linking the main EU markets with the rest of the world, connect between maritime and land-based networks, be responsive to market needs and be reliable. Based on these guiding principles, a set of operational selection criteria can be devised. These include volume concentration, scale and other positive effects related to reduction of CO2 emissions and other externalities, limitation of the total transportation time and cost to main markets, modal split in favour of co-modality, the network function with inland ports, dry ports and other seaports and the innovative use of existing infrastructure.

“In this way a core network of seaports will emerge that holds the unique trump card of significantly contributing to the global competitiveness of the European Union and improving its overall sustainability at the same time”, concluded the ESPO Chairman, “We invite the Commission and Member States to elaborate the criteria in a manner which is as transparent as possible so that it is clear why some ports are in the core network and some are not.”

As regards funding, ESPO supports maintaining the two existing work programmes under a financial period. The multi-annual programme should be reserved for the achievement of the core network and the annual programme for supporting the development of the comprehensive network. In general terms, ESPO believes that the budget for TEN-T should substantially increase compared to the budget made available under the current framework. ESPO can support the Commission’s proposal to develop a consistent funding strategy in the form of an integrated European funding framework to coordinate EU instruments for transport. It should however not be used as an alternative for not significantly raising the TEN-T budget as such.

ESPO also advocates to review the position of Motorways of the Sea in the TEN-T, integrating it as the maritime section of the core network.
(Source: ESPO)