Inland ports and promotion are of vital importance for the development of inland shipping …
For the second year, the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine (CCNR) publishes its annual Market Observation report on inland navigation in Europe, in cooperation with the European Commission.
This report, the outcome of close collaboration between the two institutions, provides an exhaustive overview of the market situation and of developments in European inland navigation during 2016.
Both Mrs Bulc, European Commissioner for Mobility and Transport, and Mr Georges, Secretary General of the CCNR, wrote a foreword, illustrating the publication’s resolutely European dimension.
Short analysis
The analysis of the development of transport volumes on major European waterways and in the principal European inland ports is a central component of the annual report. In 2016, river transport represented goods transportation of almost 145 billion tonne kilometres, with an increasing important concentration within the Rhineland countries.
The publication takes a particularly close look at each transport segment, in particular containers. Container transport increased by 4.6% throughout the European Union to reach 15 billion tonne kilometres.
Passenger transport, in particular the river cruise segment, also continued its upward trajectory in 2016: the 335 cruise vessels plying the Rhine, Danube , Seine, Elbe, the Rhone and other European Union rivers carried a total of 1.36 million people.