Protect Med ports from EU environmental taxes - Salvini

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 4 - New green taxes affecting Mediterranean ports damage maritime transport and European Union (EU) competitiveness, Deputy Premier and Transport and Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini said on Monday.
    "The maritime transport sector is strategic for the entire EU," Salvini told the EU Transport Council in Brussels, adding: "Together with the Mediterranean countries we will ask for attention to be given to the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and new taxes that do not help the environment but damage maritime transport and EU competitiveness".
    Italy is concerned that the extension of the European greenhouse gas emission allowance trading system to the maritime sector could have negative effects on some Mediterranean ports such as Gioia Tauro in the southern Calabria region due to potentially unfavourable competition from north African ports where the tax does not apply.
    On the ETS, Salvini said "we need to be careful to safeguard our maritime industry".
    Last month it emerged that the EU was considering a measure to protect Gioia Tauro from unfavourable competition as a consequence of ETS by extending payment of the green tax to shipowners that decide to call at North African ports if their final destination is within the bloc.
    "The implementation phase of the ETS directive could present enormous problems for the future of the port of Gioia Tauro due to the possible competition from the North African ports of Tangier and Port Said," said European Parliament vice president and MEP for the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) Pina Picierno after a meeting with European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic.
    In its present formulation the directive could threaten "4,500 workers, of whom 2,000 dockers and 2,500 linked to the allied infrastructure industries," added the president of the Gioia Tauro port authority, Andrea Agostinelli.
    "North African ports are not subject to the new European (carbon) tax and could steal a large part of the traffic from the port" in Calabria, which currently handles "over 3.5 million containers per year", said Agostinelli. (ANSA).