The Bottleneck Exercise

The Bottleneck Exercise which consists of the identification and solution for bottlenecks that hamper the development of door-to-door Short Sea Shipping has been relaunched through the ESN-web site  in co-operation with MOSES. More information about the exercise can found at: “Help to improve Short Sea Shipping”. The parties interested are possible to register both for “Best practice examples” and “Bottlenecks”. The aim is to make the exercise more visible, better known, and collect a significant number of new bottlenecks. Within this context the MOSES role is to re-animate the Bottleneck Exercise, and not to resolve the remaining bottlenecks previously identified.  MOSES has identified a number of new bottlenecks (though care must be taken to avoid defining lack of technological solutions as bottlenecks), and solutions to these may be advanced within MOSES (the results will soon be announced at the MOSES portal).

Clearly, the major bottleneck remaining is the lack of a "common maritime space". The European Commission's study on this issue is in under progress. One key issue is whether there could be dedicated EU cargo vessels, though this appears not to be favoured by those vessel owners/operators which operate vessels both inside and outside the EU.