Setting up motorways of the sea in the Western Mediterranean

1. Setting up motorways of the sea in the Western Mediterranean Brest, 17th February 2006

2. Evolution of the concept of MoS • White Paper: European Transport Policy for 2010 (September 2001): • Promotion of the Short Distance Maritime Transport to avoid as far as possible the external cost generated by the continuos growth of road traffic. • The Van Miert comision (2003): • Four large maritime corridors: • Baltic Sea, North Atlantic, Western Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean. • The incorporation of the Motorways of the Sea in the TEN-T: • Co-decision of the Council and the Parliament (Decision 884/2004/EC). • Priority project in the Trans-European Networks. • Incorporation to the TEN-T of actions not strictly infraestructural, but related to the provision of services and, therefore, subject to the market regime. • Vademecum issued in conjunction with the call for proposal TEN-T 2005. Define the requirements these type of projects must fulfil

3. Main Objetives • The concept of Motorways of the Sea appears fixed in Decision 884/2004. • MoS shall aim to concentrate flows of freight on sea based logistic routes: • Improve existing maritime links or establish new viable, regular and frequent links • Reduce road congestion and/or improve access to peripheral and island regions and States

4. Reasons for the MoS • Principal european road corridors show alarming levels of congestion, with regard to costs, reliability of the logistic chain and environmental effects. • Alternatives in road networks are scarce and very costly, especially in the bottlenecks • The situation is going to deteriorate: increasing growth in traffic of goods and expansion of the EU. • Effective solutions in two types of intervention: Minimizing unnecesary movements and offering new transport routes (rail, sea, interior canals, intermodality) • Interventions must maintain the rules of competition. • The peripheral regions must additionally solve two types of problems simultaneously: Congestion in transport with origin or destination in the central zones of Europe and distance, with the corresponding effect on the costs linked to the volume of tons x kilometre.

5. Instruments to put MoS into practice • Marco Polo programmes: • Transference actions. From road traffic to other modes. • Actions with catalytic effect to relieve structural insuficiences of the markets. • Joint learning actions. • Directive 2002/6/EC: Standardised IMO FAL forms. • Standarization of intermodal loading units (EILU) • Inprovement of the environmental results of SSS. • Financial instruments: National financing, TEN-T funds, FEDER, Interreg aid, Cohesion funds.

6. Other instruments • Technical actions: • Guide to the customs´ regimes to SSS. • Computerization of customs´ regimes. • Elimination of obstacles to the development of SSS • Technological research and development. • Operational actions: • Unique administrative windows • To maintain designated person in the administration of each country. • Aid to centres of SSS promotion. • Promotion of the public image of SSS. • Compilation of statistical information.

7. Actions realized for launch and consolidation of MoS • Marco Polo I (2003): • Budget: 15 million euros • Projects: 13 selected from 92 pesented. Subsidy of up to 14.6 million euros. • Only 2 projects for MoS in the Mediterranean. • Marco Polo I (2004): • Budget: 20.4 million euros. • Projects: 12 selected from 62 presented. • Only 1 SSS project in the Mediterranean. • TEN-T actions 2004: • From 120 projects covered, up to 8 can be linked more or less with MoS. (Only 2 in the Mediterranean).

8. Development of MoS in the Western Mediterranean. Main Actions • EURO STARS (Marco Polo I). Expansion of Maritime Services for trailers. Increased SSS services between Italy, Spain, Tunisia and Malta. • UNITNET SS&I (Marco Polo I). Transport of perishables by SSS between the south of Spain and Rotterdam/Vissingen. The project was discarded because there wasn´t an adequate private operator. • MARIS (Marco Polo I). Maritime and railway connection between France and Spain. Expansion of services Valencia-Livorno. Intermodal services Piacenza-Valencia. • PLACA and ATMOS (Interreg IIIB):Studies of the possible strengthening of SSS lines in the Atlantic/western Mediterranean arcs.

9. Western Mediterranean and TEN-T Rail link Berlin-Verona/Milan-Bologna-Naples-Messina-Palermo Malpensa Airport South-west European high-speed rail link Motorways of the Sea Goods rail link Sines/Algeciras-Madrid-Paris

10. Western Mediterranean. SSS Conections

11. Results of the instruments for development of MoS in the western Mediterranean • Low number of projects in relation with the potential of the Mediterranean as a maritime corridor to support MoS. • Most of the projects are based in ports or maritime links with high volume of traffic. This means that the instruments implemented have effect over the improvement of links that are previously viable. • These ports and maritime links are in the north part of the western mediterranean areas, in the most central regions of the Mediterranean. • All the projects related to new ports and maritime links in the most peripheral regions in the Western Mediterranean are only studies or have been discarded for different reasons.

12. Balance of the situation • MoS is a necessary policy for the regions at the heart of Europe to reduce congestion of the road corridors • The tools and instruments currently available would formally allow some of the problems of the situation to be addressed. • However, these instruments are incomplete and can cause undesirable effects over the peripheral regions of EU, mainly in the Mediterranean areas: • The instruments have a clear lack of resources to guarantee their success. • The instruments are devoted mainly to the competitivity objetive of the MoS (concentrate flows of traffic goods in maritime corridors). • There aren´t specific instruments dedicated to achieve the objetive of improvement of the access to the regional and island regions (cohesion factor)

13. Specific problems of the peripheral regions in the Mediterranean • The instruments of the EU for development of MoS are focused on the competitivity of the maritime links: • Concentrating the flows of traffic in specific ports or maritime corridors. • Focusing the financial instruments in the operator. It will incentivate the improvement of existing maritime links rather than in establishing new ones. • This model will benefit the Mediterranean regions near the road bottlenecks (Pyrinees and Alps) that are more “central” than the peripheral regions of the south Mediterranean and have a bigger hinterland and better land infrastructures. • The most peripheral regions of the south Mediterranean can increase its “peripheric” condition and lose competitivity if these instruments are not complemented with others that implement the “Cohesion” component.

14. Proposals for a better implementation of MoS (I) • Identification of MoS: • The criteria for identification of MoS ports and links, must be a balanced decision between flow concentration and improvement of the accessibility of the peripheral regions. In any case it mustn´t be acceptable to increase the disadvantage in competitivity of these regions. • Resources: • The resources destined for MoS from the diverse financial sources (TEN-T, Marco Polo, etc) must rise substantially. • The limit of the public intervention to avoid distortion of the competition between operators has to be balanced with public investment to guarantee the competitivity of the peripheral regions.

15. Proposals for a better implementation of MoS (II) • Accesibility to the regions of major periphericity: • This is one of the aims of the MoS as defined in the decision 884/2004. • Specific instruments for this objetive must be made available by the Commission, based in the principles of cohesion. • Flow concentration cannot have, as collateral consequence, the increasing of the disadvantage of the peripheral region in terms of competitivity. • The extension of TEN-T, as proposed in the report of the high-level group of Loyola de Palacio cannot have undesirable effects over the competitivity of the peripheral regions of the EU • Specific proposal are: • Clarify the scope of “auxiliary infraestructure” in Marco Polo II to facilitate the intermodality: logistic areas, modal interchangers, etc. • Incorporate to the TEN-T the diferent terrestrial links to give continuity to the MoS in the peripheral regions. • These routes should conceptually be considered as trans-national stretches of the TEN-T,although physically they are only in one State.

16. The short term future • Marco Polo II (2007-2013): • 740 million euros for the 7 years. • 2 new forms of action: • Any innovative action that transfer loads from road to SSS or combination of aquatic with other where trajectories by road are as short as possible. • Actions of traffic avoidance. • Its intention is to stimulate private operators to make better use of existing infrastructures. It doesn´t cover resources for new infrastructures, except for the so-called “auxiliary infrastructure”. • The desired objetive to be achieved is that in a given corridor, the road traffic diminishes with time. • TEN-T: • MoS is considered as one of its priority actions. • The form in which the EU is going to attend to the execution of this TEN-T, and the resources finally dedicated to them, will be decisive for the satisfactory implementation of MoS.