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Invest EU billions effectively, not where it might have effect

4C Offshore | Port of Rotterdam
By: Port of Rotterdam 17/10/2014 Port of Rotterdam

The North West European Ports pledge for strengthening market-proven and existing infrastructures. A clear focus on economically underpinned European added value should prevail over considerations related to geopolitics or cohesion policy when spending EU funds. Therefore, instead of publishing more paper, the North West European Ports would like to have an open dialogue about the allocation of funding with the European Commission to realize the most effective investments in (port) infrastructure.

The TEN-T days in Brussels on 9 and 10 October kicked-off the first funding phase of the Connecting Europe Facility. With this event, the general question of how to allocate the funds comes back into focus. 12 billion Euros for the first calls might seem to be an enormous sum but it is a small amount compared to the 500 billion Euros deemed necessary to develop the core port and freight corridor infrastructure in Europe.

In the light of this, ESPON (European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion) published a draft report on transport trends and scenarios in 2014. The leading institute for this report is MCRIT, a Spanish Research bureau participating in the European Research Framework Programme. This report suggests an European investment policy to interlink second-tier cities and to enhance Mediterranean port infrastructure in order to facilitate container flows between Europe and Asia. The report further states that this would save time, euros, emissions and contaminants and alleviates congestion. 

The North West European Ports however, retain the contrary to be true. The ESPON findings clearly ignore some basic socio-economic facts, dominant economic trends, commercial consolidation and technology in new generation of shipbuilding and port-efficiency. Research conducted in 2011 by the independent research agency NEA concludes that the northern seaports offer the most efficient route for container transport into a large part of the central European hinterland. Seven ports located in the North of Europe have four times the container throughput of the principal eleven ports competing along the Southern coastline of Europe. The analysis indicates that the distribution patterns underlying these shares is efficient, and is explained by a persistent combination of economic and geographical factors. The NEA analysis was verified by the Institute of Transport and Maritime Management in Antwerp. 

An investment policy focussing on peripheral ports will therefore result in insufficient return on public investments. Furthermore, this approach undermines the goals of the European White Paper on Transport (2011). Mistakes made in the past in other industries should result in lessons learned, instead of being transposed to the freight sector.

Trans-European Transport Network

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