June marked the inaugural session of the
Pro Danube Coffee Break, held online and exclusively for our valued members. This event brought together leading experts in the field of alternative fuels and proved to be a great success! These experts provided our members with invaluable insights into the challenges and opportunities of alternative fuels as a key element of IWT's pathway towards climate neutrality.
Key discussions points focused on the following:
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- Increase of sustainable fuels and decrease of fossil fuels dependency: our guest speakers emphasised the need for a significant shift towards alternative fuels in order to reduce the sector's reliance on fossil fuels. They highlighted current advancements and future prospects in the development and adoption of alternative fuels.
- Regulatory issues: navigating the complex landscape of regulations surrounding alternative fuels was a major point of discussion. Our guest experts discussed existing regulations, expected upcoming changes and the impact of these regulations on the sector's transit towards climate neutrality.
- Infrastructure challenges: the discussion touched upon the infrastructural requirements necessary to support the widespread adoption of alternative fuels. The experts shared with us their insights on the current state of infrastructure and the developments needed to meet future demands.
- Taxation: Taxation rules play a crucial rule in the adoption of alternative fuels. The speakers discussed how different taxation strategies can incentivise or - on the contrary - even hinder a shift towards alternative fuels.
- Pricing considerations: Pricing remains a critical factor in the adoption of alternative fuels. The discussion covered aspects such as production costs and the financial viability for the sector to make widespread use of alternative fuels.
The informal setting of the Pro Danube Coffe Break set the scene for another kind of meeting encouraging vibrant, open talks on one of the hottest topics of the industry, providing our members with the latest information and insights.
The Pro Danube Team would like to express its gratitude to our esteemd guest speakers whose contribution made this exclusive event truly special!
Pro Danube recently participated in the General Assembly organised by its sister association,
Pro Danube Austria, held at the premises of the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria in Steyr. A highlight of this meeting was the election of
Lisa-Maria Putz-Egger as the new president of Pro Danube Austria.
Fritz Lehr will continue to support the association in his role as vice president. Pro Danube extends its congratulations to the newly elected management team.
Key Developments: TEN-T Regulation and its Impact
A major topic of discussion was the recently adopted Trans-Europen Transport Network (TEN-T) Regulation. Pro Danube's General Secretary, Róbert Rafael, emphasised the regulation's importance and the challenges it presents to the Danube IWT community.
The new TEN-T Regulation aims to create seamless, high-quality transport networks across Europe, focusing on sustainable connectivity without physical interruptions, bottlenecks and missing links. The corridor approach is crucial to achieving the EU's goals of sustainable mobility and economic, social, and territorial cohesion.
The development of the TEN-T network is planned in 3 phases:
- 2030: core network completion.
- 2040: extended core network completion (this intermediary deadline was introduced to advance the completion of large-scale, mainly cross-border projects).
- 2050: comprehensive network completion.
Key provisions for IWT
Several provisions are particularly relevant for our industry.
- Good Navigation Status: ensuring minimum requirements for navigability, especially low water provisions.
- Inland Ports Connectivity: ports must be connected to road or rail infrastructure and must offer at least one multimodal freight terminal accessible to all operators.
- Environmental Performance: ports should have facilities to improve the environmental performance of vessels.
- Digitalisation and Alternative Energy Solutions: the regulation also emphasises the importance of digitalisation and automation to increase the safety and sustainability of IWT.
In a nutshell, the revised TEN-T Regulation aims to improve the environmental performance of IWT highlighting the crucial role of multimodality in this regard.
Pro Danube participated in the recently organised
4th Advisory Committee Meeting of the CEF co-funded project
Preparing FAIRway 2 works in the Rhine-Danube Corridor. The aim of this project, jointly implemented by Austria, Croatia, and Serbia, is to bring the Danube waterway infrastructure forward, in an efficient, sustainable, and user-friendly manner.
Pro Danube was represented by its Chairman, Herfried Leitner, and General Secretary, Róbert Rafael, who highlighted the importance of integrating environmental considerations with the primary objective of improving transport solutions. While it is essential to account for flora, fauna, biodiversity, and nature protection, the emphasis must remain on finding effective solutions for transport tasks while respecting environmental aspects. Róbert's intervention underscored the necessity for innovative approaches that harmonise environmental and economic priorities.
MAHART Container Center (MCC) is a tri-modal terminal located in Budapest. The terminal connects rail, road and river (barge) transport and is able to handle any kind of unaccompanied intermodal means of transport, like containers (ISO containers, tank containers, 45’ pallet wide containers), semi-trailers and SWAP/WAB bodies. The terminal is on the Danube river, near to Budapest center and also near to M0 motorway connecting the terminal to all motorways in Hungary from M1 to M7. This way all areas of Hungary can be reached by truck relatively fast. With its unique location, the MAHART Container Center has direct relevance in several TEN-T Corridors: the Orient-East Med, the Mediterranean andthe Rhine-Danube, spanning a European reach-out from Spain to the Ukraine.
MCC is able to render all kinds of services connected to intermodal transport, core activity is lifting and storage of all kinds of intermodal units, other activities customs procedures, river and road transport, container repairs and cleaning, trans-shipment, etc.
In 2022 MCC opened a new empty container depot at an area rented from BUD Budapest Airport, providing a storage capacity of 2,700 TEU empty containers. As the territory at this moment can be reached by road transport only, the containers are arriving and departing on trucks.
𝗪𝗘𝗟𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗘 𝗢𝗡 𝗕𝗢𝗔𝗥𝗗!
We are thrilled to announce that