RESOLUTION A3-0067/93

Resolution on the development of maritime transport and the port system in the Adriatic and Ionian Seas

The European Parliament,

-having regard to the motion for a resolution by Mr Sarlis on maritime transport and Community ports in the Adriatic and Ionian Seas (B3-0881/92),

-having regard to the Declaration on ports and maritime transport in the Adriatic and Ionian Seas adopted by the Committee on Transport and Tourism in Naples on 18 March 1992 at the close of a public hearing attended by the Transport Ministers of the Republic of Slovenia, the Republic of Croatia, the federate Republic of Montenegro, the Republic of Albania, and numerous delegations representing Greek and Italian ports and the ports of third countries bordering the above seas,

-having regard to its resolutions of 16 November 1988 on a European port policy, 13 December 1990 on the development of the common transport policy in the run-up to the completion of the internal market, 9 July 1991 on combined transport in the EEC - an evolving situation, 12 June 1992 on transport in the Mediterranean area, and 12 June 1992 on Horizon 2000: European transport,

-having regard to its resolution of 15 December 1992 on road, rail and air transport hampered by the war in the former Yugoslavia,

-having regard to the negotiating brief given by the Council to the Commission with a view to conclusion of an EEC-Slovenia financial protocol,

-having regard to the decisions adopted at Maastricht on 10 December 1991, in particular those concerning Article 75 (transport), Articles 129b, 129c, and 129d (trans-European networks), and Article 130d (Cohesion Fund),

-having regard to the Commission proposals aimed at giving the Union the means to match its ambitions (COM(92)2000 and 2001 - Delors II package) and to Parliament's resolution of 10 June 1992 on the Commission communication 'From the Single Act to Maastricht and Beyond: The means to match our ambitions',

-having regard to its resolutions on shipping disasters since 1978, in particular those of 18 April 1991 on the shipping disasters off Genoa and Livorno, 16 September 1992 on environmental damage caused by oil spills from ships, 17 December 1992 on the accident and oil slick at Coruna and 21 January 1993 on the Braer tanker disaster, and to its opinion of 26 October 1990 on the proposal for a Council regulation establishing a Community ship register,

-having regard to the report of the Committee on Transport and Tourism (A3-0067/93),

A.whereas the Adriatic and Ionian area is undoubtedly of Community interest, since it covers two Member States: Italy and Greece,

B.whereas, because of its central position in relation to the Mediterranean countries and the connecting routes to the Far East, the area in question has a strategic part to play in the external relations which the Community maintains through the Balkans as far as the Black Sea republics of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS),

C.whereas the Adriatic-Ionian corridor is now formed by six coastal states (Italy, Greece, Albania, Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, and Slovenia) with a total population of 94.1 million,

D.whereas the geopolitical changes that have occurred in Europe since 1989 have also had a profound impact on the Adriatic-Ionian corridor, opening up new opportunities to expand transport links,

E.whereas before the Second Pan-European Conference on transport infrastructures takes place in late 1993 or early 1994, detailed consideration should be given to the possibility of expanding the transport system linking the south-east of the Community and the central regions around the Danube and the Black Sea as well as to that of developing the Mediterranean sea routes, bearing in mind that moves in that direction could provide a counterweight to the Hanseatic ports of the 'Northern Range',

F.whereas the developments in the Yugoslav crisis, which sadly give cause to suppose that peace will be restored only at the end of a protracted and painful process, will also adversely affect economic relations and trade among the different republics and between the republics and the rest of the Balkans,

G.whereas out of all the countries in the region, Greece is the most vulnerable to the repercussions of the crisis in the former Yugoslavia and is in danger of being cut off from its lifelines to the rest of the Community unless sound alternatives are found immediately,

H.whereas a trans-European network linking Italy, Greece, and the Balkans is one sound alternative to Greece's present connecting routes to the rest of Europe that needs to be implemented as a matter of urgency,

I.whereas, therefore, when the Commission draws up the 'master plan' for a Community port system, it must aim to boost intra-Community transport between Greece and Italy by developing connecting routes between ports in the two countries, taking into account the different types of specialized goods and passenger traffic which exist or could be created,

J.whereas a satisfactory outcome to the Middle East situation will create an opportunity to make more intensive use of inter-continental routes to the Far East, opening up the Mediterranean to large ocean-going fourth-generation container ships (routes to the upper Adriatic ports would be served by means of transhipment),

K.whereas shipping routes to the Black Sea likewise need to be revitalized, since, if they were developed, they could provide an appropriate complement in the short to medium term to the projected systems of land routes between the Member States and the Eastern European countries, including the CIS republics,

L.whereas Adriatic and Ionian ports need to be integrated more closely in order to enhance their efficiency and Community-wide competitiveness and whereas, therefore, especially where Italian ports are concerned, a ports plan needs to be adopted without delay and as a matter of priority in order to make for more effective concentration of public funds and provide a blueprint for reform of the ways in which ports are run,

M.whereas environmental protection and safety at sea are vital concerns for the region in question, given the high number of passengers transported and the specific topography of the Adriatic,

N.whereas the liberalization of coastal shipping could open up new opportunities, especially for 'ship to coast' trade on the Adriatic and Ionian routes, if the Community were to pursue an effective maritime transport policy and adopt the Community-wide EUROS register,

O.having regard to the visits made by a delegation from the Committee on Transport and Tourism on 17-20 June 1992 to the ports of Trieste, Venice, Ravenna and Ancona (Italy); and by the rapporteur on 18-21 September 1992 to the ports of Piraeus, Patras and Igoumenitsa (Greece), on 2-3 October 1992 to the ports of Brindisi, Taranto and Bari (Italy) and on 28-29 January 1993 to the ports of Capodistria-Koper (Slovenia) and Fiume-Rijeka (Croatia);

P.considering the prospects, by encouraging maritime transport, for transferring a proportion of regional road traffic on to coastal shipping and a considerable volume of European long-distance north-south traffic on to sea transport,

Policies to develop the Adriatic-Ionian corridor

1.Calls on the Commission, the Council, and the Member States concerned to cooperate with Parliament to make the Adriatic-Ionian corridor a genuinely 'integrated shipping and port system' of Community interest;

2.Believes that the master plan for European ports being drawn up by the Commission should be based on an agreement with the Greek and Italian governments on the ports of Community and national interest that should account for the bulk of financial resources and have priority as regards improving links to the major road networks; the intermodal analysis and planning of trans-European transport networks should be directed in such a way that, in these regions too, water and rail transport should have priority over road and air;

3.Considers it essential that, in agreement with the proper authorities in the coastal states, maritime regulations should be harmonized, port services should be standardized, telecommunications services should be integrated on a more closely cooperative basis, and tariffs and rates of harbour dues, and safety regulations on board ships and for loading and unloading operations at ports and the conditions governing the use of tugs and the payment of towage dues should gradually be brought into line;

4.Believes that the programmes to expand and reorganize Italian port facilities must be implemented immediately, in particular:

-the management of Jetty VII at the port of Trieste must be reorganized;

-facilities at the port of Venice must be reorganized by transferring the harbour station operations in the Marghera port district;

-the canal harbour at Ravenna must be dredged to make the landing stage fully navigable; the new E 55 trunk road must be built to link up with the principal international highways;

-work must be completed to connect the port of Ancona to the road network;

-the new facilities constructed at the port of Bari must be put to full use for port operations and the Ofantina national highway must be widened;

-the rail links serving the port of Brindisi must be improved; construction of the port of Taranto must be completed; operational intermodal centres must be built at the ports of Brindisi and Taranto;

5.Believes, as far as the Greek ports are concerned, that the following measures should have priority:

-the requisite funds must be provided to enable the development programmes for the ports of Patras, Igoumenitsa and other parts of Western Greece to go ahead, not least where the necessary construction of the new connecting routes to Athens, Volos, Kalamata and Salonika is concerned;

-the plans to link up the railway network between Patras and Athens with a railway of the same gauge as the Athens-Salonika-external line and between Igoumenitsa and northern Greece must be implemented;

-the plans to link up the motorway network between Igoumenitsa and Salonika, between Igoumenitsa and Volos and between Igoumenitsa, Patras and Kalamata must be implemented;

6.Considers that the trade and commercial and economic cooperation agreements and financial protocols to be negotiated or already concluded by the Community with the republics of the former Yugoslavia and with Albania should cover:

-the development programmes for the port of Koper in Slovenia, with priority going to a new rail link with Trieste and the Ljubljana motorway;

-moves to expand the port of Rijeka, with priority going to completing the motorway to Zagreb;

-the development programmes for the ports of Bar and Durrės and with attention being paid to connections with their hinterlands;

-the plan to provide inland connecting routes to the ports in each country in order to make the latter immediately and easily accessible;

7.Calls on the appropriate Community and national authorities to coordinate their plans to expand individual ports with a view to preventing large sums of public money being wasted on superfluous large-scale port facilities and installations that are not put to full use;

8.Considers it essential to set up and/or expand interport or intermodal centres, affording easy access to the main transport networks, with the aim of promoting combined transport and specialized forms of traffic;

9.Believes, as far as trans-European transport networks are concerned, that programmes should be drawn up to provide the basic facilities required for an area of European interest and hence to cope, for example, with the increased volume of transit traffic that will be crossing Alpine passes under the terms of the agreements recently concluded with Austria, Switzerland, and Slovenia;

10.Believes that national governments, in particular the Italian and Greek Governments, should take measures in accordance with Community directives on free competition and with a view to:

-redefining the tasks of port authorities, i.e. those responsible for running ports;

-reducing the role of the State in overseeing the loading, unloading, and handling operations carried out at ports;

-enabling a range of different entrepreneurs to become involved in port operations and in moving and handling goods; and bringing about a rationalization of ancillary services;

-protecting the working and safety conditions of port employees;

11.Points to the need to encourage every form of cooperation aimed at boosting, improving the efficiency, and cutting the cost of ferry services between Greece and Italy, in particular to and from the ports of Brindisi, Bari, and Ancona on the one hand and Patras, Igoumenitsa, and Durrės on the other;

12.Points out that development in the area in question, as in other areas, has to be sustainable and consistent with a clean environment, especially where the marine environment is concerned; stresses that the likely increase in traffic must not, under any circumstances, jeopardize environmental protection and safety at sea; furthermore with respect to the transport of goods which are harmful to the environment and intrinsically dangerous the Community must ensure that the provisions of the IMO and MARPOL conventions are strictly adhered to in these areas also;

13.Stresses that the inspections and monitoring carried out at ports and in coastal areas need to be harmonized upwards throughout the Community to match the highest possible standards, that more stringent safety standards need to be laid down to govern navigation, by adopting systems such as the 'Vessels Traffic System' (VTS), and shipbuilding, and that state-of-the-art advanced technologies have an essential role to play in the above connections;

14.Believes, given that passenger ferries provide a public service, that they and the railways should be encompassed within a single fare policy whereby common intermodal fares would ultimately be introduced; moreover, there should be no obstacles between the Member States to the freedom of Community shipowners to provide shipping services between the ports of the region compared with other shipowners operating Community vessels on the grounds of restrictions on free competition due to international conventions (COTIF etc.);

15.Considers that better use should be made of the 'free port zones' already in place in the ports of Trieste, Venice, Astakos, and in ports in the former Yugoslav republics, since they could help to boost trade on competitive terms;

Possible sources of funding

16.Calls on the various institutions involved in developing the Adriatic-Ionian corridor to observe the subsidiarity principle and release funds to finance all the necessary measures with a view to improving port facilities, constructing connections to the road, rail, waterway and multimodal transport network, and setting up intermodal centres as laid down and defined in the plan;

17.Believes that the following individual sources of finance could be used:

-the financing provided by the Italian and Greek governments;

-the funds earmarked in the Community budget for the different programmes falling under the heading of development of the transport sector, i.e.:

(a)the new Cohesion Fund provided for in the Maastricht Treaty, from which Greece will be eligible to benefit,

(b)a proportion of the Structural Funds, to be used by the Community's Adriatic Objective 1 regions,

(c)financial instruments for the environment (e.g. LIFE),

(d)special funding for the plan for an Adriatic-Ionian transport system,

(e)the opportunities afforded by EIB assistance (not least in the light of the recent financial agreement between the EIB and EFTA);

-the funding earmarked for transport under the trade and commercial and economic cooperation agreements to be renegotiated with the former Yugoslav republics and Albania;

-financing provided by regional authorities and the port authorities;

-measures financed by private firms;

18.Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the governments and parliaments of the Member States, the governments of the Republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia, the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia and Albania, the European Conference of Ministers of Transport (ECMT) and the Council of Europe.