The Sardinia Region has submitted a request to the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport for the revocation of the new maritime territorial continuity tenders, deeming them “severely limited compared to the transport needs” of the territory. This was announced by the regional transport councillor, Barbara Manca, during a meeting with delegations from Confindustria Sardegna and Confapi Sardegna.
The initiative comes on the eve of the deadline for three of the procedures launched by the Mit in recent months to award, for the next 5 years, the public service connections for maritime passenger and freight transport to and from the island. Specifically, these are the tenders for the Genoa – Porto Torres, Cagliari – Naples – Palermo, and Civitavecchia – Arbatax lines, all expiring tomorrow, July 1st, and the procedure aimed at collecting expressions of interest and requests for authorizations for the Civitavecchia – Olbia line, which closed last May 17th but whose outcome is not yet known.
The new tenders – Manca stated – “are a mere reissue of the previous ones, despite the fact that for two years we have asked for an open discussion to improve the offer, also with the proposal of a maritime territorial continuity dedicated to freight.”
Hence the decision of the body to draft “a very detailed document” with which to submit the request for “the revocation in self-defense of the new tenders.” The body – the councillor specified – has requested the immediate suspension of the four procedures already launched and the start of a process involving the Region aimed at calling “new tender procedures calibrated to the real needs of the community, passengers, and freight.”
On the same occasion, Manca also recalled that the Sardinia Region, together with Corsica, has asked the governments of Italy and France “for a 5-year exemption from the application of the ETS directive by virtue of their common condition of insularity,” regarding air and maritime connections to the two islands. The request is also at the center of a joint letter sent on June 17th to the governments of the two countries, and aims to find strength in the Quirinale Treaty, considered “a fundamental political space to provide concrete responses to insular territories.”
