Results of vote in Parliament

The European Parliament adopted a resolution tabled by the Committee on Transport and Tourism on NAIADES II – An action programme to support inland waterway transport.

It pointed out that inland waterways link up important EU ports, cities, industrial centres and main agricultural areas, thereby making a considerable contribution to the EU goals of decarbonisation, sustainable growth and territorial cohesion.

Whilst supporting the actions under the NAIADES II action programme 2014-2020, Parliament urged the Commission to update the NAIADES programme by 2020 to ensure that the potential of inland waterway transport can be fully exploited through a long-term EU strategy aimed at achieving a successful modal shift.

Infrastructure

Members noted that by 2050, 80 % of the EU’s population will live in urban areas, increasing the demand for public transport and improved city logistics, and it will be challenging and expensive to expand existing land infrastructure. Accordingly, Members called on the Commission and the Member States to integrate inland navigation in urban and port policies and to fully exploit its potential for transporting goods and passengers, given that many EU cities are located along waterways, with a view to improving quality of life and reducing congestion levels. In terms of existing infrastructure, Parliament emphasised Member States’ responsibility for increasing the performance, reliability, availability and climate resilience of existing infrastructure through rehabilitation.

Clean transport

Parliament stressed that, in order to comply with the objectives of the Paris agreement of 2015 (COP21), the resilience and decarbonisation of the transport system should be achieved through an accelerated shift to low-carbon transport, resource efficiency and clean propulsion. This transition requires corresponding standards and funding to stimulate innovative waterway management, a wider uptake of clean vessels, and retrofitting where possible, and the deployment of the necessary refuelling infrastructure.

Funding

Members noted that limited financial resources have been dedicated to the inland waterway sector so far, and access to finance remains difficult for a sector primarily consisting of small businesses. Furthermore, they underlined that previous action programmes have fallen short of their goals as the result of a lack of dedicated resources. Accordingly, the Commission was asked to ensure that the NAIADES III action programme receives adequate and dedicated funding to achieve its goals, supported by a well-structured policy strategy with achievable short- and mid-term goals and a concrete roadmap that sets out, inter alia, the resources for implementation.

Parliament urged the Commission to privilege grants for inland waterway projects in general, since past experience with blending projects has shown that private partners were involved only in the execution of works, with the public authorities remaining responsible for financing, given the public and multi-purpose character of waterways.

Stresses the importance of providing appropriate funding for new technology, innovation and sustainable transport infrastructure and services under EU programmes such as the Connecting Europe Facility, Horizon 2020, European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund in order to stimulate increase the environmental and digital performance of inland waterway transport, Parliament called on the Commission to establish dedicated funding streams to realise this goal.

Digitalisation

The resolution asked the Commission to prepare an implementation strategy for the Digital Inland Waterway Area (DINA) and a suitable regulatory framework for connected and automated transport by water, including reviewing Directive 2005/44/EC on harmonised river information services. The aim is to create a solid EU-wide legal basis for cross-border data exchange of fairway, voyage, cargo and traffic information with a single point of access. Parliament underlined the importance of integrating digital inland waterway services into the data flow of other transport modes in order to facilitate seamless multimodal door-to-door services.

Transport network

Parliament welcomed the work planned and being carried out in the Atlantic, Baltic-Adriatic, Mediterranean, North Sea-Baltic, North Sea-Mediterranean, Orient-East Mediterranean, Rhine-Alpine and Rhine-Danube corridors, and the fact that, in general, more Member States are investing in the development of inland waterways and ports. It underlined the importance of removing bottlenecks to achieve high-quality waterways and called on the Commission to give funding priority under the Connecting Europe Facility to rehabilitating, fairway, lock, bridge, shoreside and port infrastructure and improving cross-border sections of the core network.

Lastly, Parliament recommended exploiting synergies between clean energy grids and waterway networks to make optimal use of hydropower generated at waterways, wind energy in ports and other clean energy sources at waterside mobility hubs for supplying transport, households and industries while minimising distribution costs.

T8-0131/2019

B8-0079/2019