HAROPA targets €40m in EU funding

The ports, which make up the joint venture HAROPA, have requested subsidies from the European Commission as part of the first European call for proposals within the scope of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), which aims to help achieve an efficient and zero-carbon European multimodal transport network by 2050.

The first call for proposals is budgeted at €11.93bn. HAROPA has requested funding for studies on river access to Port 2000 at the Port of Le Havre and Port Seine-Métropole Ouest in Paris. The funding would also go towards upgrading and repair works of Tancarville locks at Le Havre, improvement of the maritime access way at the Port of Rouen and the construction of the river terminal in Alizay at Rouen.

“The common strategy to our three ports aims at strengthening HAROPA’s position in the heart of the transport corridors,” said Nicolas Occis, HAROPA president. “HAROPA is now recognised as a committed and trail-blazing player in the implementation of a multimodal action plan at the scale of a transport corridor.”

HAROPA-Port of Le Havre is also a partner to two files submitted by Brittany Ferries and Stena AB within the framework of the same call for proposals which concern the installation of scrubbers on board the ferries sailing to the Port of Le Havre.

This fits in with Le Havre’s strategy to boost throughput at Port 2000 to 4.8m teu by 2020, an increase of 50%.

The “CEF” has a total budget of €33.2bn over the period of 2014-2020, including about €26.2bn allocated to the transport sector (RTE-T) with a view to improve trans-border connections, cancel the bottlenecks and complete the networks. The objective is to accelerate the funding in order to complete important trans-European networks, with regards to transport (RTE-T), energy (RTE-E) and electronic information systems (e-TEN).