For Assarmatori, "the proposal to revise the directive ETS presented by the European Commission is too timid, even though containing important acknowledgments of the requests we have had a way to highlight several times in Brussels, at every level" and the shipowners' association in the next steps in the Council and Parliament expects "a consolidation of the and more courageous interventions".

The president of the shipowners' association, Stefano Messina, specified that "the great absentees from the Commission's text are the tools needed to protect links with the major islands and the Motorways of the Sea. On this - he denounced - the most intransigent and short-sighted part of the European Commission He did not want to make openings. It is a serious fact: it is put this way the principle of territorial continuity is at risk, and the existence of freight transport services that achieve a real environmental sustainability. The next few months will therefore be The European Parliament and the Council will have the opportunity to transform a still incomplete revision into an instrument capable of protecting the competitiveness of the maritime transport and the strategic role of European ports".

Assarmatori admitted that, however, in the legislative proposal presented today by the European Commission ( of 17 July 2026), there is no shortage of encouraging aspects. "One of this, which consolidates our request - explained Messina - is the extension to 2035 of the exemption in force for connections with the smaller islands. This protects economic and social cohesion of fragile territories that cannot suffer the ETS extra costs. These results are the result of the commitment of both the components of the European Commission closer to the industry's reasons, such as the executive vice-president Raffaele Fitto, and of the government Italian".

The association noted that the text also contains a special regime, although limited to incoming routes in the Union, in the form of discounts from the ETS extra cost for intercontinental container transhipment activities, with the goal of supporting shipping companies to maintain Traffic and investments in European terminals put in crisis by the environmental taxation. 'The scope of the proposed instrument - Messina complained - is still insufficient, but it paves the way for a concrete solution to the problem of container transhipment in the subsequent phases of the legislative process. Today, after years of resistance from the DG Climate, we welcome with satisfaction the recognition of a priority instance, that is, that in order to overcome the problem transhipment cannot be used only to punitive and ineffective such as the extension, also proposed in the text and daughter of a bureaucratic and short-sighted approach, of the rule of the 300 nautical miles. It is essential to maintain in Europe the vital hubs of logistics, at the service of industries especially in this moment of great uncertainty geopolitics".

Assarmatori noted that the legislative proposal, moreover, welcomes its own and industry's call for the establishment of an economic support mechanism for the purchase of fuels through price differential compensation with conventional fuels, financed by emission allowances free of charge as is already the case for the aviation sector. The association specified that, however, in this regard, the The Commission's text also includes among the items that can be financed propulsion technologies, creating a complexity potentially problematic as it can result in a unclear market incentive.