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Unions set out social proposals for a revamp of Inland Waterways transport

27 June 2007

Present and future of the Inland Waterways transport was the core topic of a lively debate at the TRUST Inland Waterways workshop hosted by the Danube Commission - and co-funded by the European Commission - on 26 and 27 June in Budapest.

Unions and experts looked into the brutal restructuring faced by the sector in Western Europe and the massive job cutting that followed.

Today, labour shortage seems hard to be reversed: the training of inland waterways’ captains alone requires over 8 years. River systems and trading patterns are other specificities to take into account.

While the hotel ship industry seems to be steeping up, salaries remain a delicate issue for the staff on board and the increasing presence of flags of convenience further contributes to the race to the bottom.

In 2006, the Commission launched NAIADES, a programme aimed at rebirthing the inland waterway transport for the period 2006-2013. NAIADES focuses on five core areas - Market, Fleet, Jobs and skills, Image, Infrastructure -, but deals with some implementation barriers. The industry revival based on small firms remains another open topic.

Inland navigation is retained as an environmentally sound mode of transport, but a policy framework for environmental sustainability should be focused on shipping rather than waterways only, unions underlined. And they added that old fleets pose serious environmental concerns, while bringing about health and safety problems on board.

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