Starting in January, the port of Trieste will connect with the inter-port of Fürnitz in Carinthia, the first and only European International customs corridor: the incoming containers will be loaded directly from the ship to the cargo train and task the road to Northern and Central Europe without customs checks, which will be handled in Austria once they arrive”.

This announcement was delivered by the Port System Authority of Trieste, which defined it as “An important advantage for cargo, which will travel faster with a reduction in administrative processes, allowing for an increase in sea-rail transport.”

Zeno D’Agostino the President of ESPO praised the announcement: “For us, it is an important step. With the first European international customs corridor between two countries, we speed up both import and export procedures towards an important junction from a railway point of view. This benefits not only Trieste and Austria but also all of Central and Eastern Europe. This will greatly reduce administrative and bureaucratic steps, which in turn will decrease both container handling times and costs relating to the passage of goods, in and out of our port, towards world markets or from world markets to these areas which will improve our competitiveness internationally”.

The President of the Association of Forwarders of the Port of Triest, Stefano Visintin, has also been in support of this important initiative since its conception: “With the customs corridor between Trieste and Fürnitz, the quay from the Adriatic to Carinthia would be extended. We trust that our Austrian clientele will use this opportunity and use our port more frequently. We are confident that in a short time the total volume of shipments of Austrian goods in transit through Trieste will increase, which benefits the whole system”.

Visintin also commented on another desired change in regulation: “We trust that the changes to the Italian VAT law that we advocated for will be implemented by the Government. It is nearly impossible to work in in importation for non-Italian EU entities. It’s a tax problem, not a customs problem, caused by the current VAT law which requires you to have a tax representative in Italy”.

The self-harm done by the Italian tax legislation has been one of Visintin’s main points of contention for many years. The new corridor will not fix this issue, but it will increase the opportunities given to Austrian customs officers from the increase in traffic provided by the corridor.