ESPO underlines “there is no time to lose” in implementation of new strategy

This followed the European Parliament officially adopting the Berendsen report which aims to provide the foundation stones for “building a comprehensive European Port Strategy.”

ESPO further noted that in its view, “The voted text demonstrates a good understanding of the challenges ports are facing and the high investment needs ports have to be able to play the more comprehensive and critical role they have nowadays.”

It adds: “On top of being the Union’s gateways to the world, logistic nodes and industrial clusters, Europe’s ports are hubs of energy.” And that: “As has been demonstrated over the last two years, ports play a critical role in ensuring Europe’s energy security and are at the same time facilitators and even accelerators of the energy transition. Ports,” ESPO underlines, “need large public and private investments to take on all these responsibilities and to continue to develop.”

Citing two building blocks of the new European Port Strategy ESPO highlights the merit in the proposal to review the current Foreign Direct Investment Regulation and the focus on putting the competitiveness of Europe’s ports to the forefront.

In the former context, ESPO argues that the review should, “oblige all EU Member States to implement a foreign direct investment screening system and carry out screenings in a more harmonised manner. This,” it further emphasises, “must enhance the necessary level playing field within Europe and contribute to more legal certainty for potential investors aiming to invest in European ports.” Generally, ESPO welcomes that the report “underlines the importance of a more stable investment climate and predictability in investment assessments.”

A key element of boosting competitiveness is seen by ESPO as Parliament’s acknowledgment and call for support for the role of ports in energy transition and in particular developing hydrogen infrastructure in ports and speeding up permitting procedures. Equally, Parliament’s call to avoid carbon and business leakage, avoiding excessive administrative burden, boosting hinterland connections to and from ports as well as for providing dedicated port envelopes under the Connecting Europe Facility is also seen as a most beneficial outcome.

Overall, the review and downstream reform of the European ports industry as viewed by the European Parliament gets a positive vote from ESPO. It does, however, additionally make the important point that as well as generating new legislation it is important that this is implemented in a timely way just as it is important in conjunction with past relevant legislative measures where today there remains room for improvement. “There is no time to lose,” stresses ESPO.