Fedespedi and Assiterminal have sent to the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport and to the Chairs of the Committees competent parliamentarians, technical notes as well as requests for clarifications and amendments regarding the regulation of the waiting of trucks for loading and unloading goods. "The discipline in question - explained Alessandro Pitto, president by Fedespedi - responds to the need for greater efficiency in loading and unloading operations but, as well as recently modified, continues to generate application uncertainty and does not take into account the operational complexity of the nodes logistics, in particular ports and airports. With this request formal to MIT, we reiterate the need for regulatory solutions that adapt to the actual reality of the operators, while protecting economic sustainability and the daily operations of shipping companies".

"It is evident - added the president of Assiterminal, Tomaso Cognolato - and all the players in the supply chain logistics, whether public or private, have an interest in make services more efficient to make the transport and the relationship between customers and carriers, but this objective certainly cannot be achieved through a stiffening of the system that does not take into account the multiple variables that compose it and also of some distinctions that have a value in the contractual relationship and in the legal approach. The port terminals, as well as other logistics and are investing heavily to strengthen their organizational flexibility, no one has an interest in stressing the system".

Among the most critical aspects highlighted by the federation of freight forwarding companies and the Association of Terminal Operators in the formal requests to the MIT, the specificities of ports and airports that - have observed Fedespedi and Assiterminal - cannot be assimilated to every Another logistical node, due to the complexity of the dynamics commercial and operational operations that develop at these Infrastructure. In such cases - they noted - the fight against the The phenomenon of waiting goes beyond the strict contractual relationship between the customer and the carrier and the need for special instruments, such as programme agreements promoted by the responsible for the control and regulation of the infrastructure public logistics. For these reasons, Fedespedi and Assiterminal consider that ports and airports should be excluded from the scope of application of the new discipline.

In addition, the two organisations noted that operators who intend to interpret the new provisions in a mandatory sense do not take into account the diversity that exists between the places of load, which makes it impossible to establish a single time limit and standard allowance valid for all logistics nodes and for all different types of transport and goods. For this reason, Fedespedi and Assiterminal strongly support the primacy of the contract between the parties as a single instrument that allows adapt the discipline to the individual operational context, by way of derogation from the general regulations.

Finally, Fedespedi and Assiterminal absolutely disagree by the interpretation of some associations of hauliers that suggest that the 90 minutes should also include the time for material loading and unloading operations, pointing out that, at the On the contrary, the legislation provides that the time to charge and unloading the goods must be indicated in the written contract to free choice of parties. Fedespedi and Assiterminal have therefore urged the relevant institutions to clarify unequivocally whereas the 'franchise period' corresponds only to the waiting period for hauliers before they occur all the conditions useful for loading and unloading.

Fedespedi and Assiterminal concluded by recalling that they every useful opportunity for dialogue with all interested parties to reiterate that the current legislation does not solve the inefficiencies in particular in port logistics nodes and airports, found by operators in the various passages of the logistics chain, and indeed have the effect of directly burdening on the cost of goods, damaging the competitiveness of the Country System.