The North Adriatic Sea Port Authority – together with the Harbour Master’s Office, Maritime – Aviation and Border Office, Customs, Border Guard, Italian Finance Police, FireFighters, terminals VECON PSA, TIV, Venice RoPortMos and VTP – has been working in the past weeks with two goals: planning temporary landing places for cruises in 2021, thus letting the sector restart in compliance with the protection of waterways of cultural interest declared national monuments, in particular the San Marco Basin and the Giudecca Canal and launching a technical working group supporting the plan of interventions that the Commissioner will have to carry out in view of the 2022 season and the following ones.
The calendar of temporary landing places for Venice-Porto Marghera is expecting the arrival of about: 18 units calling the Venice Passengers terminal (VTP) (*as they respect the gross tonnage limit of 25,000 tons and the criteria provided for by the Legislative Decree of last July); 10 at the Venice RoPortMos Terminal in Fusina;1 at the VECON PSA terminal; 2, whose destination will be defined in the next few days. Vessels with a gross tonnage exceeding the limits set by the decree will navigate the Malamocco-Marghera canal. The organizational and managerial aspects related to the operational model are being finalized.
Fulvio Lino Di Blasio, President of the North Adriatic Sea Port Authority and Special Commissioner for cruises, said: “Thanks to the collaboration and commitment of each player, we have been able to recover 50% of this year’s cruise schedule. We made it possible by identifying temporary solutions, verifying their suitability related to the type of vessels to be hosted and other aspects related to the safety, and considering to find a balance between passenger and commercial/industrial traffic, never forgetting to protect both the environment and jobs. We started working immediately to give a concrete and prompt response during such a difficult moment for the Venetian cruise sector, to safeguard tourism, workers and port functions. This is only the first step of a concrete path that next autumn will find us committed to giving a sustainable future to the cruise sector in Venice. And this is all done by keeping in mind that a vast community was largely damaged in terms of jobs in a very complex historical framework for our port, in which it is essential to operate in an organized manner, and by joining forces”.