Inland waterway transport: integrated European action programme Naiades

This Commission Staff Working Document is the mid-term (second) progress report on the implementation of the NAIADES Action Programme for the promotion of inland waterway transport. It covers the period from 2006 until now. The report gives an overview on the achievements reached so far, the measures still under way or to be tackled and outlines the next steps until 2013. Its main conclusions are as follows:

• NAIADES plays an important strategic role: it has created a universally acknowledged European momentum in the inland waterway transport sector and raised it high on the political agenda of all stakeholders;
• it has become clear that the programme cannot be pursued at EU level alone but together with the Member States and the inland navigation sector itself;
• a number of measures cannot be accomplished "on their own" as they are interrelated with other policies such as intermodality with other transport modes or the internalisation of external costs, which go beyond a modal sectoral approach;
• the programme is not equipped with a dedicated EU budget. It is widely acknowledged that the lack of dedicated resources turned out to be a disadvantage for the implementation of the programme, which could only to a limited extent be compensated for by the PLATINA programme;
• the overall objectives of the current programme - competitiveness, intermodal integration, awareness raising; energy-efficiency and environmentally-friendliness of the fleet; removal of infrastructure bottlenecks; research and technological development; technology and innovation transfer into the sector and last but not least employment, education and training and working conditions - remain valid in the future;
• to further exploit the potential of inland waterway transport, the strengthening of its market position, its integration into co-modal transport chains, enhanced nodal interoperability, the deployment of new technologies, including River Information Services (RIS) and their interoperability with other intelligent transport systems, will gain increasing importance;
• to ensure the long-term development and successful implementation of a European inland waterway transport policy also in the wider strategic transport policy framework, the programme needs support - possibly from existing funds such as infrastructure, research and structural funds.