Port projects in the European Union face significantly longer permitting timelines compared to competitors in neighbouring regions such as the Southern Mediterranean or the United Kingdom.

In an increasingly volatile geopolitical and economic environment, the ability to deploy projects rapidly is no longer a procedural matter — it is a strategic necessity for maintaining Europe’s connectivity, resilience, and industrial competitiveness.

European public and private stakeholders play a key enabling role in the fulfilment of several core objectives of the European Union. They must adapt to military mobility requirements in order to strengthen the Union’s defence preparedness, while simultaneously supporting the energy transition by handling clean fuels and energy-related cargoes and by providing refuelling and recharging infrastructure to calling vessels. In addition, by connecting maritime shipping with sustainable hinterland transport modes, port stakeholders are indispensable allies for achieving the EU’s modal shift ambitions under the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy and the Greening Freight Package.

Against this backdrop, efforts at EU level to accelerate permitting procedures and reduce administrative burden are both timely and necessary. FEPORT welcomes ongoing initiatives aimed at shortening approval timelines for infrastructure projects linked to defence and energy networks. These initiatives demonstrate that regulatory efficiency and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive, but can be reconciled through clearer procedures and greater legal certainty.

Nevertheless, port investments are not only delayed by lengthy permitting timelines but also by overlapping compliance obligations stemming from environmental, reporting, and sustainable finance frameworks. Ports located in proximity to Natura 2000 sites, for instance, face structural constraints that require clearer interpretation of the concept of “overriding public interest”.

While infrastructure developments may affect protected areas, they also directly contribute to the Union’s strategic autonomy, energy security, decarbonisation efforts, and preparedness objectives. Ensuring a balanced and predictable application of EU environmental legislation is therefore essential to avoid unintended barriers to projects of European interest.

In this context, a future Maritime Omnibus Simplification Package could provide an opportunity to rationalise implementation requirements across environmental, decarbonisation, and digital legislation affecting ports. Simplification should not entail lowering environmental or safety ambitions, but rather removing duplicative reporting obligations, clarifying technical definitions, adapting investment thresholds to current cost realities, and ensuring proportional application of rules to smaller ports and local traffic.

Ultimately, simplification is not a deregulatory exercise but a precondition for delivering the investments required to meet Europe’s climate, security, and connectivity objectives. A stable and predictable regulatory framework will allow ports to continue acting as strategic nodes of the European economy while maintaining high environmental and social standards.

On another note, recent preliminary findings presented by the EU-ETS Observatory indicate that the implementation of ETS in the maritime sector may already be affecting connectivity at European ports in long-distance container services. Early data points to a reduction in the share of activity handled by EU ports in this segment between 2023 and 2025, alongside a growing role of neighbouring non-EU ports in shipping route planning and infrastructure investment decisions.

While the sector remains firmly committed to the decarbonisation pathway, these developments confirm the urgency of a dialogue on the adaptation of the legislation to mitigate the unintended impacts of ETS on Europe’s maritime connectivity, supply chain resilience, or modal shift ambitions.
Source: Feport