"Cruises are an important tourist resource for the country, a tool for promoting the Italian System and cannot nor must they become the target of a hate campaign indiscriminate that tends to identify in the large white ships the new enemy for territories, communities and the environment". This was underlined by the president of Federagenti, Paolo Pessina, during the public assembly of the federation, representing shipping agents and brokers held today in Rome at the Orlando Hall of Confcommercio.

Referring to the "demonization" of cruises, Pessina specified that "today we are talking about signals, but - he warned - the campaigns of hostility and "refoulement" mature quickly and often produce uncontrolled results and uncontrollable". "Faced with a trend that, in a way that sometimes grotesque, tends to identify passenger ships as the symbol of luxury that tramples on rights (along the lines of the protest over the wedding of Jeff Bezos) - denounced the president of Federagenti - it is necessary to intervene immediately and decisively".

On the occasion of the assembly, Federagenti launched a "Pact for the sea" which proposes first of all an operation truth on the impact of white ships and cruise passengers, therefore a real and "formula" for coordinating tourism that It comes from the sea. A tourism - Pessina recalled - that generates a jobs for every twenty cruise passengers transported, which produces a total turnover of 168.6 billion dollars, which in Europe reaches 55.3 billion and in Italy 15 billion.

The Federation of Italian Shipping Agents recalled, moreover, that, out of over 460 million tourist presences that choose our Peninsula, cruises account for less than 3%, with 15 million transits. Federagenti has drawn a map of the places where cruises are increasingly being disputed, starting with Portofino, which has 528 inhabitants and an average of 12 thousand tourists a day. Then the Cinque Terre, with 4 thousand inhabitants compared to four million tourists a year; Amalfi Coast 34 thousand inhabitants and a pressure of over two million tourists per year; Capri with 7,300 inhabitants and an average of 50,000 tourists per day day. And then Venice, which - the federation noted - is the mother of all battles, the port city, the former Maritime Republic that has driven cruise ships away from the Lagoon and where, without ships - observed Federagenti - 60,000 tourists a day swarm through the streets with peaks of 150,000, a in the face of an indigenous population that in the historic center does not exceeds 49 thousand inhabitants.

However, Federagenti is aware that cruises are in any case part of the problem, so much so that its "Pact for the Sea", which proposes the involvement of territories, communities, cruise lines, operators under the direction of shipping agents, starts from the proposal for an intelligent scheduling of the berths of the cruise ships and the launch of measures to avoid overloading in the seasonal peaks and improve social acceptance, including through a national timetable shared by all the ports and the main cruise companies.

In addition, the Pact proposes permanent working tables between ports, agents and companies to track and comply with a calendar of arrivals and departures that prevents the concentration of the same in single dates and times; the development and differentiation of co-designed sustainable itineraries; the involvement of the public administrations and local stakeholders; the enhancement also of minor or secondary ports with sustainable development; the enhancement of alternative destinations for shore excursions; the design and enhancement of the resources produced by local communities through agreements shared on shopping on land; harmonization of the system of port rules; harmonisation of management rules of the berth: refusals, security, permits, declarations administrative; the homogeneous and systematic application in all Italian airports of ESG procedures Environmental, Social, and Governance that involves the highest level of sustainability for the territories, their citizens, workers and businesses involved. Finally, the transformation of this system of rules, often characterized by great rigidity, from a cost factor to an added value for the territory and the Owners.