The members of the European Parliaments Committee on Transport adopted on Monday 28 June a draft report on inland waterway transport in the European Union (see EUROPE 12691/7).
The paper calls on the Commission to build on existing programmes—such as the Naiades programme (see EUROPE 12748/28)—and stresses that increased investment in infrastructure modernisation is essential. This should not be done at any price, however, says the document, which places respect for the environment at the centre of its priorities.
The draft report presented by Caroline Nagtegaal (Renew Europe, The Netherlands) calls for the encouragement and support of initiatives to use clean fuels and propulsion methods.
“Low-emission and zero-emission alternatives should become more financially attractive than conventional propulsions and that this trend should be accelerated”, the text says.
Furthermore, the draft report—which recalls that “the inland waterway sector consists mostly of SMEs, family businesses and smaller ports” for which significant investment is complicated—stresses the importance of existing financing instruments.
These are important “for greening and digitalising our European inland waterway transport sector, such as the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), Horizon Europe, and the Structural and Cohesion Funds”, the draft report says.
Finally, in addition to underlining the important role of inland ports as multimodal nodes, the draft report also invites the Commission to set up a specific European fund for inland navigation. A one-stop-shop system for aid and assistance could be developed, allowing the possibility of combining different projects into one application, thereby increasing funding possibilities.
See the draft report: https://bit.ly/3qw6jNG (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)