Danish Maritime and SEA Europe promote the green and digital transition in the EU

Danish Maritime has actively participated in SEA Europe’s work with the recently released “EU mobility transition pathway” published by the EU Commission on February the 29th. It is the result of 2 years of collaboration between the EU Commission and relevant stakeholders. The purpose of the work has been to identify the challenges, opportunities, and solutions needed to ensure the European green and digital transition, as well as to strengthen the European transportation industry.

In this context, we in SEA Europe have particularly highlighted that we have the right solutions especially for the green transition but need better framework conditions to be able to realize the potential. Massive state aid, subsidized steel, and “buy local” programs pose a challenge to our industry.

The defensive trade tools we have in the EU today are not very effective in the maritime areas. This is due to specific characteristics of our industry (e.g., ships are not seen as an imported good). This makes it difficult to defend against unfair competition practices in the maritime area. This underlines the need for the EU to develop a separate policy for the maritime industry, where a first step could be to adopt a European maritime strategy.

The Commission invited industry organizations to commit to contributing to the digital and green transition of the transportation sector. SEA Europe is fully ready to actively contribute on both fronts but also urges the Commission to ensure better framework conditions.

The CEO of Danish Maritime and board member of SEA Europe, Jenny Braat, states: “It is incredibly positive that the Commission is having this dialogue with the industry organizations across the transportation sector. The maritime industry is ready to be part of developing the solutions that will ensure the green and digital transition of shipping. We hope that the Commission and the Danish government are ready to be active players in ensuring that this can be done with European ships and European technology.”