By Brian Johnson - 17th January 2006
The European Commission has unveiled plans to develop Europe’s rivers and canals to carry more freight transport.
The programme, announced on Tuesady aims to improve the EU’s heavily congested transport system by shifting freight from road and rail on to Europe’s inland waterways.
EU transport chief, Jacques Barrot, said the action plan would boost Europe’s growth and unemployment.
“With a fleet of 11,000 vessels and a capacity equalling 10,000 trains or 440,000 trucks, inland waterways can make transport in Europe more efficient, reliable and environmentally friendly,” said Barrot.
“Europe cannot afford to leave that potential untapped.”
The lengthily titled, ‘Navigation and inland waterway action and development in Europe’ action plan, (NAIADES) hopes to combat the EU’s growing reliance on road transport, which the commission says is costing the EU €billions in congestion and pollution related costs every year.
The proposals follow stakeholder consultation last year, and focus on five key components: services, fleet, staff, image and infrastructure.
Commission sources said that the plan will tackle the “spare capacity paradox” of inland waterways, where despite the EU’s 30,000 kilometres of canals and rivers, market share for transporting freight floats around the seven per cent mark.
Road transport currently carries around three quarters of the EU’s freight transport.
The commission reckon that only around 10 per cent of the Danube’s maximum capacity for freight is actually being used.
The action plan identifies a number of hurdles that need to be overcome if Europe’s inland waterways are too fully integrate into an intermodal freight transport network, argues the commission.
Primarily, this will mean a shake-up of the market structure, which Brussels believes is too fragmented, provides only limited re-investment opportunities and makes it difficult to access capital forming a barrier to new entrepreneurs.
The commission also wants to sink any administrative bottlenecks and provide clear guidelines on state aid to ensure a level playing field across member states.
The plan which will run until 2013 will bring together all EU inland waterway players, including industry, member states and Brussels and will see the creation of an ‘innovation fund’ to develop fleet modernisation and crew development.
Key targets areas include looking at boosting the number of skilled personnel, tackling the poor perception of Europe’s inland waterways and ensuring member states’ responsibilities for maintaining their waterway infrastructure.
Part of the problem for Europe’s navigable canals and rivers is its fragmented administration, says the commission. Different rivers come under different regimes, at different levels and with overlapping regulatory responsibilities.
The commission says it will look at options to change this complex structure, by introducing common rules.
The costs of the action programme are as yet undefined, say the commission, and need to be ironed out between EU capitals and the European Parliament who will both scrutinise the proposals.
Speaking to EUPolitix before the commission’s announcement, Diane Chevreux, secretary general of the European federation of inland ports said Europe’s waterways had the potential to carry much more freight.
“Now is the time to do something about inland waterways. There is huge potential here, which has been neglected for too long, “said Chevreux.
“We now feel that the commission is ready to do something about developing Europe’s inland waterways.”
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