Europe wants more MONALISA
The TEN-T days bring together European decision makers from the whole transport sector. Riga, the capital of Latvia, was hosting the event June 22-23 as a part of the presidency of the EU.
The European Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc was one of the hosts and talked about the importance of digitalisation of the transport chain in order to make it more efficient – a perfect match to the ambitions of Sea Traffic Management (STM). Ines Ayala, member of the European Parliament, visited the MONALISA 2.0 stand at the exhibition. She was impressed by the SAR-exercise in Valencia June 15th and would like to see even more being done for the Safety of passengers.
 Violeta Bulc, EU Commissioner |
 Ines Ayala, MEP with MONALISA 2.0-members Ulf Siwe, Magnus Sundström and Jesus Carbajosa |
The Motorways of the Seas (MoS) is becoming more important for European transports. EU is acknowledging this fact and during the conference a new call for projects was announced for this autumn with 350 M€ being available for co-financing. MONALISA 2.0 is one of the larger MoS-projects and receives lots of credit for being run by the book and delivering good results. The Commission would like to see more of such successful projects in the future.
The maritime importance was also manifested in the exhibition where the maritime projects filled the second largest hall. The MONALISA stand was visited by more than 500 of the approximately 1500 conference delegates, and attracted interest also from people outside the waterborne sector, for example SESAR, the multi-billion aviation undertaking, expressed interest in sharing ideas and knowledge.
The interest to participate as partners and advisors to future STM and Safety projects was large and many valuable contacts were made.
