Trieste-Furnitz corridor: the signing today in Vienna
TRIESTE – Official green light, with today’s ceremony in Vienna, for the Customs Corridor between the port of Trieste and the Furnitz freight village near Villach (Carinthia).
The event – which was held in the enchanting setting of the Winter Palace of Prince Eugene in Vienna – was attended by the Austrian Finance Minister, Magnus Brunner, Zeno D’Agostino, president of the Trieste Port Authority, representatives of the the Italian and Austrian Customs Agency, the governor of Carinthia Peter Kaiser, the CEO of OBB Andreas Matthä and the CEO of Adriafer Maurizio Cociancich.
The procedure that allows containers unloaded at the Trieste terminal to be sent by train and to carry out customs procedures once they arrive in Austria, has been completely dematerialized (there is no paper) and simplified in many steps.
The process will be followed by Circle Group and its subsidiary Infoera, which already deals with Sinfomar, the Port Community system of the Trieste Authority. Circolo, on the other hand, will support Adriafer for the management of interoperability with the Customs.
«We are proud to be present at this important event which ratifies the results of the collaboration between the Austrian and Italian institutions for the development of the new intra-community customs procedure, which will allow the unloading of containers arriving at the Port of Trieste from the ship to the terminal, transferring them temporarily custody in Austria – explains Luca Abatello, president of Infoera and Circle Group – thanks to the efficient railway connection, guaranteed by Adriafer, RCA and ÖBB, carrying out the further customs activities once you reach the interport of Fürnitz, in Carinthia».
The newly established Customs Corridor, the first in Europe, is particularly interesting for the port of Trieste because theoretically replicable on many other routes that connect the international airport to the rest of Europe, where 80% of the goods handled end up. The operation of the Corridor will start in January, the security checks and the mandatory ones such as health checks remaining in the hands of the port of Trieste.
«It is an important step for us. With the first European international customs corridor between two states, we are speeding up procedures – commented the president of the Authority, Zeno D’Agostino – both in import and export towards an important junction, from a railway point of view, for Trieste but also for Austria, and for all of Central and Eastern Europe. This allows for a considerable reduction in administrative and bureaucratic steps, decreasing both container handling times and costs relating to the passage of goods, in and out of our port of call, towards world markets or from world markets to these areas. With the effect of improving our international competitiveness».
Along the same lines too Stefano Visintin president of the Association of Forwarders of the Port of Trieste who has supported this important initiative from the outset: «With the customs corridor between Trieste and Fürnitz, the quay ideally extends from the Adriatic to Carinthia. We trust that the Austrian clientele will use this opportunity and consider our port with increasing attention. If in the immediate future our category may have to carry out fewer customs operations with low added value, we are confident that in a short time the total volume of shipments of Austrian goods in transit through Trieste will increase, with benefits for the whole system. At the same time, we trust that the changes to the Italian VAT law that we advocate will be implemented by the Government, allowing goods destined for other European countries to be imported at the Italian customs without an unnecessary burden for EU importers, allowing our country, among other things, to collect part of the duties on these goods”.