Port of Barcelona hosts start of ESPO reflection process on TEN-T review

ESPO’s policy contribution to the review will be accompanied by an economic analysis. Both will be presented at the ESPO 2009 Conference in Marseilles.
Members of the ESPO Intermodal and Logistics (I&L) Committee gathered in Barcelona on 5-6 March for their spring meeting. The programme included a workshop to kick-off preparations on ESPO’s contribution to the review of the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T). The European Commission published a Green Paper on this review early February which sets out a number of options for further TEN-T development (see ESPO News 15.02). These will form the basis for a new set of TEN-T guidelines to be issued by 2010. Ports feature prominently in the Green Paper as the Commission believes they are key factors in making an integrated logistics approach a reality.
Hosted by Santiago Garcia-Mila, Deputy Managing Director of the Barcelona Port Authority and recently appointed Chairman of the ESPO I&L Committee, the internal workshop compared viewpoints of rail and inland waterway stakeholders on infrastructure bottlenecks as well as perspectives of ESPO members from the main port regions in Europe.
The Commission (DG TREN) was represented by Gudrun Schulze, Project Officer on TEN-T policy and Dimitrios Theologitis, Head of the Ports Policy Unit. They introduced the Green Paper and the questions at stake regarding the position of ports. ESPO’s policy input to the consultation will be accompanied by an economic analysis of the European port system, which is currently being prepared by Prof. Theo Notteboom of the Institute of Transport and Maritime Management Antwerp (ITMMA). Prof. Notteboom gave a sneak preview on his findings at the workshop.
ESPO Secretary General Patrick Verhoeven concluded the Barcelona meeting by outlining the further steps ahead. We have gathered a wealth of useful information today, he said, and we will in the coming weeks prepare a first draft of our policy paper. The main question to address is how the principal option proposed by the Green Paper, i.e. the dual layer of a comprehensive and core network, can be realised taking into account the diversity of ports existing in Europe as well as competitive aspects. This will be a challenging task, but one which should certainly not be impossible after the input we received today. ESPO’s policy contribution and the accompanying economic analysis will both be presented at the ESPO 2009 Conference which will be held in Marseilles on 14-15 May. Contrary to the Barcelona workshop, participation to the conference is public.

Source: Transportweekly