The European Commission has propounded a boost in short sea shipping in Europe by encouraging EU member states to adopt unified modern electronic management systems.
Speaking at a shipping conference in Bulgaria, Christos Pipitsoulis of the Commission’s transport and energy directorate said there are several initiatives to bring to an end the old-fashioned reliance on paper original copies, which prevails in many countries in the EU.
Admitting that it is no simple feat to develop an agreed framework which can cope with all the problems of different administration practices, national languages, computer systems and information requirements, Mr Pipitsoulis added that the Commission’s attempts to find a solution were well-advanced.
Alberto Magrassi, an expert in shipping systems from IT firm Elsag Datamat and a member of the Commission’s PROPS (Promotional Platform for Short Sea Shipping and Intermodality) consortium aimed at promoting short sea shipping, called for the EU to force its member states to adopt new systems, stressing that reliance on these paper systems is undermining the attempts of short sea shipping to compete with road and rail freight.
“In many states it is still the requirement to present papers signed in triplicate to authorities - some countries like Italy have adopted unofficial systems but these are just shortcuts to presenting the papers in their original format a few days later,” he said. “The European Commission should force member states to speed up the adoption of modern systems in order to have real support for short sea shipping.”
Responding to concern raised regarding the difficulties in bringing together many diverse IT systems into one system and considerable compatibility and language problems, Mr Pipitsoulis said: “This is a real concern and there are a number of initiatives in the Commission which are looking at these issues. It is something we are very aware of.”
