The Italian government led by the prime minister Matteo Renzi is shaking up the national law on ports and ships. The latest Council of Ministers has just approved some important changes dealing with port authorities and the so called motorways of the seas.
Starting with the ports law, the Cabinet said yes to a new regulation aiming at cutting bureaucracy, reviewing a system regulated by a 1994 law and assigning to port authority presidents more managerial tasks. The two main points of the new law are: decrease from 25 port authorities to 15 regional Port System Authorities and transformation of the former Port Committee (which included representatives also of the private stakeholders) into a lighter Management Committee (where the new members will be named only by local political institutions). As for the bureaucratic simplification, the new law establishes that all the administrative port-related procedures will be united in a new Customs and control single window.
Some big changes regard the Italian local cabotage rules too. Following a fierce competition between Grimaldi Naples (on one side) and Tirrenia, Moby and Snav (on the other side) on the motorways of the seas market where some extra-EU seafarers were embarked thanks to tailor-made agreements with labour unions, the minister of transport decided to limit the access to the Italian international registry’s fiscal benefits only for the Italy flagged ro-ro and ro-pax ships with 100% Italian or EU crew members onboard on the routes linking two national (continental or insular) ports.
As of today Italy’s government did not amend yet its tonnage tax scheme in order to allow other EU flag ships to access the regime that basically allows for the determination of presumptive income based on the net tonnage of the qualifying ships apportioned to the effective shipping days (tonnage income).
