TRIESTE – He had anticipated it on these pages in recent days; he reiterated it today in Bled in front of the Foreign Ministers of Slovenia and Croatia. Zeno D’Agostino, president of the Port Network Authority of the Eastern Adriatic Sea, has strongly invited to invest in the North Adriatic Ports Association.
The topic dealt with by the panel organized today within the Bled strategic forum concerned the collaboration between the ports of the North Adriatic and particularly between Trieste, Koper, and Rijeka.
«In Trieste, we are investing a lot in brains because we cannot stress the competition. It’s a stupid business to stress the competition, and if you don’t want to do it, you have to invent something different,» D’Agostino said.
«Napa is a huge instrument, and we didn’t use it as it could be. We have to invest in it; we have to put money in Napa. We can find a lot of things to do where we are not competitors,» continued the president of the Trieste Authority. Therefore, do not seek almost impossible collaborations on commercial competition, but on other issues, which D’Agostino identifies in connectivity (especially the technological one, perhaps referring to submarine cables and the consequent availability of data) and in the protection of the environment, subjected to damage by the climate change. Still, according to the Authority president, finally, the association between the North Adriatic ports should also be open to politicians to facilitate decision-making and collaboration.
Yesterday at Mittelfest, a similar hypothesis of collaboration between the ports of Trieste and Koper emerged during the meeting between Vittorio Torbianelli, Secretary-General of the Trieste Port Authority and Sebastjan Šik, head of external relations of Luka Koper. In front of the Slovenian ambassador Tomaž Kunstelj, it was said that the objective is to work as a team and have common goals to be competitive.
The competition between the two realities must become an added value, a challenge for the future built today, and that is based on energy, new fuels, and new communications. Those who will sail in the Adriatic will have to change fuel according to EU directives, and this is where we must invest in high-security communications against cyber attacks. Ambassador Kunstelj stressed several times the importance of closer cooperation between the two ports because, together, they represent a strategic resource for all of Central Europe.