portstrategy:It seems the European Commission wants to maintain a competitive balance amongst its ports whilst in the container sector the system favours a scaling up of groups and consolidation.<\/p>\n
How do you think these two positions can be reconciled?<\/p>\n
CE-B: Consolidation is an inevitable and evolutionary process within this industry and it cannot be stopped. But this trend is creating an even higher container volume per customer amongst European ports and this in turn means less flexibility to change container terminal operator. This is a natural fact of global concentration which container terminal operators are also faced with. One should not blame the container terminal operator since he is not involved in this process of concentration.<\/p>\n
portstrategy : what do you think of the calibre of port authority management around Europe?<\/p>\n
CE-B: Contrary to the international approach of container terminal operators, in major European ports, I feel the port authorities don’t cope very well with the challenge of container terminal transport. They are too much restricted to their local ‘church tower’ parochial outlook and policies when in fact they need to develop their skills towards a more intelligent port development policy in their respective markets.<\/p>\n
This means, for example in the Hamburg\/Antwerp range, there should be a more transparent exchange of information among port authorities to optimize the tremendous investment loads in port infrastructure they have undertaken.<\/p>\n
The qualifications and calibre of port authority management is not always high enough to cope with the needs of the above mentioned.<\/p>\n
You can call it a somewhat dusty bureaucracy.<\/p>\n
portstrategy Are we attracting the right calibre of people into the private sector? Is port management seen as an exciting career track or does more need doing to promote the industry, find the right people and train them?<\/p>\n
CE-B: The private port sector is controlled by global players or local port companies such as Hamburg’s HHLA, which can certainly compete with global standards. So for such companies and organizations, I believe the levels of professionalism are already high.<\/p>\n
portstrategy Do governments interfere too much or not enough in port strategy? Can the private sector demand clear policies and yet still expect to operate freely? Where does the balance lie?<\/p>\n
CE-B: The port sector in Europe is a stepchild of the respective national governments. If you consider that maritime transport is the most environmentally friendly of modes, over all, in today’s global trades, it is difficult to understand why European governments are neglecting the need for an adequate strategy and even why they are not enforcing the right developments on their international ports. The private sector cannot but denounce these deficiencies at each and any opportunity.<\/p>\n
portstrategy What are your thoughts on lead-times for port developments in Italy and elsewhere? Is there a balance between progress and sustainability? Where does it lie?<\/p>\n
CE-B: Since the port business is a global game you only need to compare the progress of port infrastructure developments in China and other Far East countries with that of Europe. With the pace of development in Asia, Europe in general appears slow and inefficient in terms of port development progress.<\/p>\n
portstrategy How much further can labour reform go? It seems it can be achieved in spirit and in name but never actually implemented, or only partly implemented.<\/p>\n
CE-B: Today European seaports are the number one ‘job machine’ in an environment of very slow economic growth throughout Europe. The fact that the port sector is in this favourable position is thanks to global trade.<\/p>\n
Our trade unions have very clearly recognized this fact and are aware that a flexible attitude towards port labour tariffs is a solution for reducing unemployment in Europe. The lowest, most competitive prices when making a worldwide comparison, are in southern Europe and the Mediterranean. And second lowest is in northern Europe. This fact speaks for itself and is a result of the high degree of competition amongst European ports. So in this competitive environment the new EU initiative of Ports Package 2 is totally unjustified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cecilia Eckelmann-Battistello is president of the Federation of European Private Port Operators (FEPORT) and managing director of leading container terminal operator Eurokai. She spoke to Nick Elliott .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1184,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-1183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1185,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions\/1185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1183"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=1183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}