European maritime cities, destinations for cruise tourism – the association highlights – denounce the cruise phenomenon of over-tourism
Italia Nostra has returned today to express strong perplexity about the need to build the port of Fiumicino-Isola Sacra by urging concrete answers to politics and to the administrators, an invitation to which only the mayor of Fiumicino, Mario Baccini, in favor of the project for the construction of the new tourist port, has welcomed a request for a meeting by environmental associations and of the citizens’ committees.
The planned port area was assigned in a 90-year maritime state concession to the Fiumicino Waterfront of the American cruise group Royal Caribbean Cruises (of 24 February 2022). According to Italia Nostra, the project “would end up facilitating the monopoly of a private individual, world leader in the cruise sector, to which it is delivered, the only case in the area, a stretch of Italian coast, the mouth of the Tiber, a place rich in history and vulnerable in the environmental and marine balance” and, “if implemented, it would also constitute a dangerous precedent, favoring the loss of weight of the public and the transformation of small marinas into large private infrastructures”. Italia Nostra recalled the genesis of the project that sets the basis on what happened in the 90s when the Municipality of Fiumicino had entrusted a state concession to build a tourist port near the Sacred Island for pleasure boats in the stretch of coast overlooking the northern shore of the mouth of the Tiber. A real redevelopment project with internal storage has been ignored – highlighted the association – the construction was started in 2010 of the tourist port known as Porto della Concordia by the I.P. Iniziative Portuali and Invitalia Spa, with a concession of 90 years, but soon the works were interrupted due to the bankruptcy of the I.P. company and on the coast remained an 800-meter cliff in place of the port arm under construction. Then, in 2018, Invitalia submitted a request for a variant of the project that envisaged the introduction of cruise ships for the large ships of Royal Caribbean, claiming to keep the function of “yacht” “prevalent” marina”, boats of about 10 or 15 meters.
The environmental association has listed the answers again asked to various questions, starting with the lack of evaluation of the impact of buses and taxis induced by ships on the routes of access to the squares and monuments of the historic center of Rome and from the fact that the Environmental Impact Assessment on the territory of Fiumicino does not offer a cumulative impact assessment with the other port of Civitavecchia of the System Authority Port of the Central-Northern Tyrrhenian Sea already in construction just two kilometers from the one planned in Fiumicino, also intended for a cruise port, which – noted Italia Nostra – moreover provides for multiple rail connections, instead of weighing exclusively on the saturated road network urban area of Fiumicino.
Among the remarks made by Italia Nostra, the association has denounced that the project envisages, “for the first time in history, the birth of a tourist-cruise port never planned in the middle of the port system managed by the Autorità del Mar Central-Northern Tyrrhenian Sea, which already has a commercial port in the Municipality of Fiumicino, with the function also cruise industry. It would also be managed by a private company, world leader in the sector, which, for 90 years “owner” of a piece of Italian coast, would full competition to the ports of the Central-Northern Tyrrhenian Sea draining its revenues”.
Italia Nostra concluded by underlining that very recent newspaper articles show “that the administrators of all European maritime cities, a destination for cruise tourism, denounce the cruise phenomenon of over-tourism, compared by some mayors to the invasion of locusts, which brings no wealth but only consumption of the city. This is the case of Barcelona, Marseille, Amsterdam, Bergen and many others European cities. But the mayors of Rome and Fiumicino, imprudently – observed the association – go to Bucking. The project for the port of Fiumicino-Isola Sacra is presented as a great opportunity and enjoys procedures facilitated and rapid authorizations”.
