It is a fact without precedent in the annals of the European Commission: the Marco Polo programme, which was set up to promote and provide financial support to schemes to transfer road transport flows to shortsea and inland shipping and rail modes, has never used up its budget.
The fund was created in 2003 and allocated a 5-year budget (2003-8) of E220M, but only E163M has been taken up. Other EU modal shift programmes have run out of money long before the five years were up.
This may be read a sign that only "high quality" projects have qualified, and indeed almost half the applications submitted in 2007 and 2008 were rejected. But in the earlier years the rejection rate ran as high as 80% and the fact is that the number of applications has been falling. Only 78 projects with a total support package of E119M were retained during 2003-7 and half of the beneficiaries were classed as small and medium transport firms, defined as having fewer than 250 employees and turnover below E50M.
At the same time, however, Europe's roads are increasingly congested and the consequences in terms of road accidents, lost productivity, carbon footprint and so on are increasingly hard to bear. The theme of the Marco Polo review conference held in Venice on 10-11 June was that the programme is therefore even more strategically important for the EU than it was five years ago.
The 2-day event was attended by more than 150 delegates, including a fair number of shippers, forwarders and rail and short sea shipping operators. This indicates that there is still considerable interest in what Marco Polo might have to offer, particularly given the high cost of diesel.
Jean Trestour, the director of DG-TREN (the European Commission's transport directorate), has identified a number of problems with the present set-up, some of which are connected with the conservatism of many small road haulage firms.
Apart from resistance to and fear of change, they inevitably face difficulties in organising unaccompanied transport chains and are reluctant to give up control as they might open themselves up to competition.
And Trestour's point about companies sometimes being "put off" by the complexity of alternatives to road transport certainly chimes with experience. For example, one delegate, Dr. Irma Pasukeviciute, a lecturer in international logistics policy at the University of Plymouth, which has been involved in a number of project enquiries and applications, remarks that the schemes may require additional staff, but that can entail substantial extra administration costs.
Another point made by Trestour was that sometimes the multimodal solution is inadequate because there is a weak link in the chain. A good example is the ATTAC short sea ro-ro service provided by Louis Dreyfus Armateurs between Toulon and Civitavecchia; it is still a struggle to fill the ships.
In order for the shipping offer to be really attractive, there needs to be an onward rail connection from Civitavecchia to Bari, which would then link into the existing and vibrant ferry services to Greece and beyond to the growing markets of Turkey and the Balkans under one Bill of Lading. Unfortunately the rail line between the Italian ports is inadequate for the frequencies and axle loads required.
To help "relaunch" Marco Polo, in March the administration was turned over to a dedicated team within the European Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation (EACI) led by Patrick Vankerckhoven. One of the first changes has been the appointment of a commmunications director, Andrea Pascal, charged with increasing the visibility of the programme and making it more transparent. Changes will include a new website and a free on-line newsletter.
Fundamentally, Vanckherckhoven wants leading industrial shippers to take a pro-active role and demand that their transport service providers do their utmost to respect environmental norms. He suggests that standard road haulage contracts should include clauses requiring recourse to other modes where possible.
The next Marco Polo conference is scheduled for Valencia, 3-4 December, when EACI may be able to present some preliminary results, but firm information on the new budget for Marco Polo will not be available. At the moment EACI has 10 staff, four of whom evaluate applications. But it may need to take on more people if things are to be given new impetus, particularly as part of EACI's brief is to reduce the time it takes for projects to be approved.
At the moment it can take up to 18 months from the date of application to get a project approved, according to another delegate, Chris Rowland of UK-based consultancy MDS Transmodal Ltd. Meanwhile, the opportunity could have vanished, or there could be a major change in the project's viability (eg bunker prices). But Rowland also makes the point that the EACI has to exercise extreme care when analysing project applications, to ensure that there is no risk of new schemes "cannibalising" the traffic of existing non-road based services....
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