Current crisis situations in the world create difficulties to Italian ports, including the port of Livorno, which looks to the southern shore of the Mediterranean to address its impacts with Increased resilience. Speaking to the representatives of the Committee of management and the Partnership Body of the Port System of the Northern Tyrrhenian Sea, in a meeting also extended to the Regional Councillor for Activities Leonardo Marras, and the Municipal Councillor for Ports, Barbara Bonciani, the president of the Tuscan Port Authority, Luciano Guerrieri, confirmed that "the ports of call in the Upper Tirreno are experiencing a moment of suffering, like the others Italian ports": "Between January and March," he announced, the port of Livorno recorded a general decline of almost all types of traffic, starting with containers, forest products and new cars. The only positive exceptions are represented by rolling stock traffic and passengers'. "In the first quarter of 2024," he added - the introduction of workers in port companies to work decreased by 8.6% compared to the same period of the year (from 57,427 to 52,447)'.

Looking for solutions to ensure that the system the port of the Upper Tyrrhenian Sea can better withstand the shock wave caused by international crises, the PSA has identified one of the intensifying relations with North African nations, In view also of the recent trend of nations to bring production activities closer together by placing them close to or within their own borders. "On a global level," Guerrieri observed - nearshoring and reshoring processes have long since begun to provide a viable response to the vulnerabilities of the supply chains. The relocation of establishments and suppliers in countries closer to Europe, and often friends, is promoting economies close to the most important markets, such as Morocco, Egypt and Turkey. It therefore becomes essential closer relations with these countries and develop a a port foreign policy that allows us to adapt to the new industrial supply chains that will be created." To this end, Guerrieri has announced that next month the Port Authority will enter into a agreement with the Egyptian port of Damietta. "The goal - he explained - is to begin to weave our own network relations with the Maghreb countries'.

Focusing on the impact of the current significant reduction in the maritime traffic through the Suez Canal caused by attacks by Houthi rebels on ships transiting the Red Sea, and in the Gulf of Aden, Guerrieri specified that the port of Livorno has not been significantly affected, except limited to the traffic of new cars from the Far East, market on which there has been no real decline but increasing inconvenience due to the delayed delivery of vehicles.

The President of the Port Authority of the Northern Tyrrhenian Sea also highlighted the need to continue the Planned infrastructural interventions: "The development of Infrastructure, he stressed, remains a priority. The Port Authority - he recalled - has built 13 sites in this period infrastructure projects and 25 other projects are close to completion. go to the race." In addition to the implementation of the platform of the Darsena Europa, Guerrieri explained that the port system Toscano needs "additional resources to develop the new areas of competence of the port, which go beyond Maritime logic in the strict sense: sustainability Energy and the digital transition - he specified - are two themes power plants on which the Port Authority is working with great determination. We do not consider it unlikely that with the of institutional positions in Brussels, new possibilities are opening up funding for the development of projects in port-logistic area, along the lines of what we saw with the NEXT-GEN EU'.