The priority directions of the EU transport policy in the years 2001–2010, presented in the White Paper ‘European transport policy for 2010: time to decide’1, heralded a renaissance of inland navigation in Europe. In this document, the inland waterway network in Europe was defined as an ‘important EU asset’ capable of handling 525 million tonnes of cargo annually. An expression of the intensification of activities supporting inland navigation was the document presented by the European Commission on January 17, 2006, ‘Navigation And Inland Waterway Action and Development in Europe’, known as NAIADES. The program covers strategic policy areas in the field of inland navigation, namely: market, fleet, employment and skills, image, and infrastructure. It stated that ‘More than 36,000 km of waterways and hundreds of inland ports connect many economically important areas in Europe. Although the majority of the waterway network has high capacity, its full utilization is hindered by a number of bottlenecks caused by small transit depths, bridge span parameters, and locks, which limits the competitiveness of inland navigation’2.
In the Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area, it was assumed that by 2030, 30% of road freight transport over distances of more than 300 km should be shifted to rail or water transport, and by 2050 – more than 50%. This will facilitate the development of efficient, ecological transport corridors. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to expand the appropriate infrastructure. The set of EU initiatives includes creating an appropriate framework to allow for the optimization of the internal inland waterway transport market and for the removal of barriers hindering the use of this type of transport. The EU transport policy has adopted the concept of using water and rail transport for long-distance cargo transport. Inland waterways are to play a greater role in servicing the transport of seaports as logistics centers, in particular by transporting goods inland and creating connections with European seas. (…)
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Source: Logistyka Magazine 6/2011