The Port Policy Day event in Budapest brought together 50 experts from the Danube port community (port authorities/administrations, port operators), IWT stakeholders, representatives of ministries of Danube States and of European Commission services relevant for port governance/port policy as well as of international organisations including financial institutions.

In a workshop atmosphere, the participants discussed current and forthcoming policy issues of strategic importance for the Danube ports. The issues touched during the discussions with the invited speakers (Ms Maja Bakran-Marcich, Deputy Director General/DG Move; Mr Eduardo Martinez Rivero, Head of Unit E3/DG Competition; Mr Hugues van Honacker, Senior Expert Unit D3/DG Move; Mr Alexander van den Bosch, General Secretary EFIP; Mr Gerhard Gussmagg, Managing Director Mierka Donauhafen Krems)  ranged among the following areas:

• Infrastructure development needs
• Activities of EU to support port development in Danube region
• Public funding / State Aid / General Block Exemption Regulation
• Instruments for financing infrastructure needs
• Good practices in public funding and private-public partnership
• Role of ports for economic development of the region

The workshop consisted of valuable keynote speeches on foreseen European actions for port infrastructure development, applicability of the state-aid regulations in case of port investments and good practice examples of port cooperation in Western Europe, topics which were further analysed during the round-table discussion and the interactive question & answer session.

Presentations of the day can be downloaded from here:

• Motivation & Introduction - Raluca Danila, Manfred Seitz
• "Do we need a one-size fits all?" - Alexander van den Bosch
• State aid rules for port infrastructures - Eduardo Martinez
• Rhenus Logistics' activities in the Danube Region - Gerhard Gussmagg

More pictures of the event can be found in the Gallery.