Assarmatori mission to Brussels, Messina: “Maritime transport essential for Europe’s security and cohesion. Green Deal excesses should be overcome to free up energy”

Brussels – “Maritime transport is a key element in ensuring Europe’s security and cohesion, and all the more so in Italy where a world-leading ferry fleet in terms of tonnage, cargo, and passenger capacity operates. It is a segment that must be protected, especially from the ideological excesses of the Green Deal, starting with the distortions of the ETS system, in order to maintain and implement its strategic nature.” These are the words of Assarmatori’s President, Stefano Messina, following a two-day mission to Brussels during which a large delegation composed of Board members, shipowners, managers, and part of the Association’s structure had a series of high-level and operational meetings, including one with the Executive Vice President of the European Commission Raffaele Fitto.

“The maritime-port sector is an essential part of the security of European value chains and of the cohesion of our continent’s society and economy,” Messina continues. “In times when control of these chains and supplies has become a central factor in the geopolitics of the great powers, the strategic role of the maritime sector emerges clearly, as it did during the pandemic crisis.

Messina then says that to this “must be added the indispensable function performed for passenger and freight transport for the islands, major and minor, Italian and more generally of the Mediterranean basin, and the services of the Motorways of the Sea, which contribute significantly to environmental sustainability thanks to the modal shift. The cohesion of island and coastal territories is also and above all guaranteed by the sea routes that make their connections possible in an efficient and timely manner.” At the same time, the president warns, “the role of container transhipment must be protected from ETS distortions, which give a competitive advantage to ports of call located just outside European borders, such as those in North Africa. The risk is a desertification of strategic hubs such as Gioia Tauro, resulting in a loss of control over crucial containerised shipping hubs.”

During the mission, Assarmatori’s top officials also met with the Italian Group Leaders in the European Parliament, the chairman of the Parliamentary Environment Committee, Italy’s Antonio Decaro, and top officials of the European Commission in the areas of interest, as well as those from Italy’s Permanent Representation to the EU. In addition, a dinner was held with more than one hundred representatives of European institutions at different levels, with opening remarks by, among others, Italian Deputy Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Edoardo Rixi. On these occasions, Messina reiterated how “the strengths and peculiarities of Italian maritime transport have not been sufficiently valued in the European forum in past years. The new course inaugurated by the programmatic policies of the Clean Industrial Deal marks an important step forward in this regard. Now let us overcome the excesses of the Green Deal in order to free up energy, renew fleets, and accelerate the spread of sustainable maritime fuels, with particular regard to the ferry sector, which in our country is an irreplaceable infrastructure and cannot bear the burden of ETS in a very fragile market situation.”