Meeting with Swedish Minister for Infrastructure

For the first time ever, representatives from all of Sweden’s ports gathered at the Ministry of Industry, Employment and Communication in Stockholm last week. The reason was that the Minister for Infrastructure, Tomas Eneroth, had invited them to attend a meeting to discuss the ports’ role in the future transport system. Together they discussed how more freight can be moved over to shipping, and what concrete measures need to be taken. The Minister himself was very clear about what shipping needs.

“Shipping is important for Sweden, not least for us to meet the climate objectives. The Government wants all types of transport to be used more effectively together, and we can observe that shipping can be utilised to a greater extent in this context. The ports throughout the country play an important role in ensuring that together we will be able to achieve this. I hope that this meeting can contribute to more cooperation between the public sector, the business and academic worlds, and the ports to increase shipping, as well as between the ports themselves,” says the Minister for Infrastructure Tomas Eneroth.

Prior to the meeting, the ports were requested to compile three important points which can contribute to greater use of shipping in the future.

CMP has compiled three areas that we regard as crucial to enable increased utilisation of shipping:

1) It is important to view the infrastructure as international, with the ports as important hubs in the European transport system. Cross-border dialogue and international collaborations are therefore also very important. 2) CMP considers that the conditions in the transport market, both administrative and economic, should be equal for all actors, so that competition can be strengthened. 3) The shipping lanes must be made deeper so that the increasingly large ships that operate in the Sound can be handled.

Deputy CEO Jonas Arkestad and PR- & Communications Manager Ulrika Prytz Rugfelt participated in the meeting from CMP.