Source: Based on Eurostat data.

The European Short Sea Shipping Market

In 2007 total freight transport by short sea shipping in the EU-27 amounted to 1.86 billion tons or 61% of total EU-27 maritime goods transport. The most important short sea countries are the United Kingdom (366 million tons), Italy (325 million tons) and the Netherlands (259 million tons). The majority of short sea flows take place between partner ports situated in the Mediterranean (28%) and the North Sea (27%). Liquid bulk (including liquefied gas, crude oil and oil products) is the most important cargo type with almost half the total tonnage or 896 million tons. Shortsea traffic of dry bulk amounted to 364 million tons. Containers accounted for 210 million tons, roro for 250 million tons and other cargo for 142 million tons. Rotterdam was the largest European short sea port overall with 186 million tons of shortsea traffic. Antwerp was the largest European short sea port for containers with 30.5 million tons closely followed by Rotterdam with 30.2 million tons. For roll-on/roll-off transport (roro), Dover in the UK and Calais in France remained the top two short sea ports with 24.6 and 18.3 million tons of roro short sea traffic respectively.

In Europe, the restrictions to maritime cabotage have been lifted. At the end of the 1990s, the liberalization of cabotage services in Europe was virtually complete (only the Greek market remained partially protected till 2002). At present, an EU-flag ship is eligible to participate in the cabotage trades of any other EU state. This liberalization made it possible for short sea to start competing effectively with land-based transport. The European Commission is supporting the development of short sea shipping in view of a modal shift from road to other transport modes, thereby making use of the latter's underused available capacity, and a reduction of the environmental footprint of EU transport activities. The EC’s shortsea policy is supported by the creation of Motorways of the Sea (MoS) and funding mechanisms like the Marco Polo Program. The EC has set a clear policy objective to remove any remaining administrative and customs obstacles towards the creation of an EU maritime space. The basic requirements for improved services of short sea shipping relate to:

• Technical and infrastructural aspects: e.g. shorter turnaround time in ports, more efficient customs operations and administrative procedures, more favorable port pricing.
• Commercial aspects: e.g. better integration of short sea shipping in supply chain practices (data and information systems, frequency, reliability, etc..);
• Political aspects: e.g. policies to internalize the external costs of transport modes, ending of discriminative treatment by customs procedures of inner-EU shipping in favor of overland traffic , harmonization of rules for land and sea carriage of hazardous goods.

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