Public Financing of Infrastructures and Charges within the Seaports Sector in the Current and Proposed EU and Domestic Law

The development of seaports, together with that of the TEN-T, in order to further trades and the maritime traffic with origin or destination in Europe and to enhance the modal shift of road freight to other transport modes, is one of the main aims of the contemporary EU Common Transport Policy. Notwithstanding that clear and transparent rules concerning the public financing for seaports and their charging regime are an important element for the sector’s development, no specific general EU law on these subject-matters still exists, whereas they have already been dealt with for airports. The EC’s Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and the Council establishing a framework on market access to port services and financial transparency of ports concerns also the issues of public financing to ports and the port charges, in order to grant “transparency of financial relations between public authorities, port authorities and port service providers” and of the setting of port charges. Until the proposal or another common regime is enacted, at present it is possible to infer the main EU law principles and rules on the matter from the Treaties (TEU and TFEU), and from the European Commission’s decisions and the ECJ's case-law. The article’s objective consists of ascertaining and outlining the actual EU legal framework on these issues, according to all the relevant EU law, policy documents, proposals and studies, along with the ECJ’s case law and the EC's decisions, in order to outline the existing EU law that already governs the subject-matters ascertain the principles and rules port charges and public financing to seaports are/could be still bound to and the possible outcomes of the proposed Regulation. To this aim, a comparison with the airport sector framework will be done, in order to ascertain if the principles and rules already set for it could be compatible, and to what extent, with the port sector. Then, the legal framework and case-law of some EU member States on these matters will be examined, in order to depict and compare the national regimes and to assess them with regard to the proposed EU legal framework. The expected outcomes of this contribution should be the contribution to identify the existing legal framework on the financing of some transport infrastructures, as seaports and airports, the comparative outline of the existing legal regimes of seaports in some EU member States, along with the needs of bodies managing seaports, port service providers and users, also in order to identify the advantages and the flaws (if any) of the proposed Regulations and to suggest solutions. The article is published in a book that collects the articles of a solid group of international scholars on the main current issues of international Maritime and Trade Law, under the supervision of Prof. Stefano Zunarelli, of the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna. The book is published in the book series Il Diritto Marittimo - Quaderni, of the renowned international review Il Diritto Marittimo, ranked in the A class by the ANVUR, and has been internationally distributed.