The 'new' Porto Vecchio: a change of course is urgently needed, in the interest of all.

The ‘new’ Porto Vecchio: contradictory and unacceptable solutions on the destination of quays and areas still under international free port regime and planning errors in transport, logistics and mobility suggest urgent reflection by public and private stakeholders... and a change of course.

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With the publication in today's newspaper Il Piccolo, 10 September 2024, of the essential contents of the programme of the public-private partnership Municipality for Porto Vecchio, all centred on residential, shops, nautical services, tourism and sport - while there is no mention at all of new skilled jobs, financial services, trading in advanced business centres, except for those of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, obliged - in fact - to move there so as not to let the whole ambitious project fail. On the other hand, the issue of the ownership of the wharves and quays, which remain ‘public property’, assigned with a very long concession - 50 years - by the Port Authority to the Municipality, and by the latter to the private investor who will not manage them, however, under the regime of international free port, therefore in fulfilment of the obligations assumed by Italy, as it should be, and as the president of the Trieste Port Authority, Dr. Zeno D'Agostino, had declared he would be when he took office.

We reproduce here the link and an excerpt from the Piccolo article of 29 September 2015, entitled ‘Il Porto Vecchio prepares the October revolution. https://ilpiccolo.gelocal.it/trieste/cronaca/2015/09/29/news/il-porto-vecchio-di-trieste-prepara-la-rivoluzione-d-ottobre-1.12175255?

’It is wrong, however, to say that the Free Port is abandoning the Porto Vecchio.? It is a clarification that D'Agostino already wanted to make during the round table on infrastructure held on Saturday evening at the Savoia as part of the so-called Leopolda triestina organised by Pd MEP Isabella De Monte. And now he emphasises it again: ‘The entire coastline will be at least 15 metres wide, but in some places, such as the Adria Terminal area and the area where the docks are located, it will be much wider, and will remain covered by the Punto Franco. I believe that commercial traffic can no longer be activated from these docks, but if there is any operator or terminal operator who thinks otherwise, let him come forward and request the concession: he knows that he will be able to take advantage of the prerogatives of the free area within the Old Port. So the criticism and attacks from those who say that we are against the use of these piers for purely port purposes are meaningles’.

In recent years, as far as we are aware, nothing has happened at the legal and regulatory level that would justify changing the legal status of this area as an international free port, or that would ‘free’ Italy from its international obligations (Peace Treaty, London Memorandum) and, consequently, the change in the position of the Port System Authority, so well expressed at the time by Dr. Zeno D'Agostino.?

On the contrary, if anything, the requests for warehouses and yards in the old free port by some concessionaires have increased, on a commercial level, while, on a regulatory level, the Decree of the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Delrio of 13 July 2017, regulating the administrative organisation for the management of the free port of Trieste (art.1 ), in order to adapt it to the objectives of maritime traffic development with strategic planning functions of the free port management (art.4), aimed at promoting the growth of the maritime economy, maritime transport, traffic flows and the economic, social and environmental system of the territory. The Decree outlines the powers vested in the President of the Port System Authority, which manages the Free Port, thus performing the functions of the Director of the Free Port provided for in Annex VIII to the 1947 Treaty of Peace of Paris.

Let us recall that the Del Rio Decree expressly provided, art.3, paragraph 4, for the development of railway services within the Free Port of Trieste: ‘In order to promote the development of railway services in the Free Port, taking into account the principle of freedom of transit, the President shall guarantee freedom of access to all railway carriers. To this end, he may avail himself of the use, of instrumental companies, also through the assumption, of company shareholdings, in accordance with the regulations in force, aimed at promoting logistic and, intermodal connections functional to the development of the port system’. Well, notwithstanding the cogency of this regulatory provision on an area that is still a free port, which by virtue of the principle of freedom guarantees freedom of access to all railway carriers, and notwithstanding the fact that the Municipality of Trieste was well aware of the principles expressed in the opinion rendered on 16 November 2005 by the Consiglio Superiore dei Lavori Pubblici (Higher Council of Public Works), referred to in the decision of the Council of State of 15 May 2012 in favour of the same body, which states that ‘the new configuration of the activities to be carried out in the Old Free Port is in compliance with both the legal regime of state property and that of the international free port pursuant to All. VIII, as it adopts the customs in force in the other ports and free zones of the world and reflects the above-mentioned evolutionary trend of the traditional free zones towards the sector of services and logistics’, the same Municipality adopted in 2021 a new urban planning concerning the Old Port through which it intended to modify what was, one of the most valuable economic and instrumental assets of the area, the enviable - and envied by many commercial ports both Italian and foreign - railway system of the old free port, a network of 40 kilometres of tracks and lay-bys, with tracks flush with the quayside, working to cover the railway tracks of the areas that have come under its jurisdiction, still susceptible, however, to be used for free port commercial purposes and port state-owned activities, necessarily subservient to the transit of goods, but also of people, coming from/going to/from the portion of free port remaining in Porto Vecchio.

This urban planning administrative decision has in fact prevented the existing concessionaires of the free port areas, and those interested in settling therein, from making full use of the free port quays (despite the fact that the concessions in force, in compliance with the international obligations undertaken by Italy, guaranteed the concessionaires the full use of the existing and functioning railway network), because they were limited in their ability to use the extraordinary railway network that characterised and was one of the strong points of Porto Vecchio of Trieste, entirely suitable to be connected with other areas of the port and with the Central Station.

One of the cornerstones of the international obligations assumed by Italy with the Allied and Associated Powers, in the 1947 Peace Treaty, that of free access and free transit in the Free Port of Trieste was significantly limited, in contrast with the dictates of Annex VIII and with the main purposes established by the Delrio Decree: the development of rail traffic to and from the Free Port of Trieste. In terms of mobility, the Municipality has, on the contrary, opted for a cableway transport option ?from the beginning of the Old Port for two stops in the port, and then continuing on an elevated route from Barcola towards the Carso’s hill, when in our opinion it would have been more logical, more efficient, as well as consistent with the above-mentioned regulations, to maintain and reactivate the impressive logistics and railway system received from the Port Authority, implementing a modern urban light rail line suitable to cover the entire area of the Old Port up to the Barcola embankment - from where to position the only station in the city of the cableway to the Highlands, an intermodal solution that would thus make sense - providing the city with a state-of-the-art metro or light rail line, as in European economic capitals such as Zurich and Milan, for example, a line that would be extendable from the Old Port up to the Campo Marzio Station and from there to other peripheral destinations.

?On the basis of these observations, of the critical remarks that are coming from many sides with respect to the one-way tourist-residential partnership operation that the Municipality is carrying out with a private subject, and above all in consideration of the strategic interest of the International Free Port of Trieste in the changed international geopolitical context, and of the obligations of respect and execution of the international agreements assumed by Italy, it is observed that perhaps it would be opportune that the Extraordinary Commissioner of the Port System Authority of the Eastern Adriatic Sea, prof. Vittorio Torbianelli, a distinguished transport economist, should consider refraining from granting today a 50-year concession to the municipality, which in turn would sub-concession it to a private party for non-free port activities, since this act is likely to generate further appeals and litigation by a multitude of parties, and should leave this thorny issue to the new President of the Port Authority, who could be himself, if he is chosen, to be appointed by the Government by the end of the year.

This wise decision would also allow the Municipality of Trieste a pause for reflection that would be useful for adopting, in turn, corrective measures to the project, which is causing serious and justified criticism from many quarters, also with regard to the specific choices made in terms of logistics and mobility in the area, and the suitability of the activities that will be established there.

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