Within an increasing competing and market led seatransport-and port-functioning one notices nowadays a drifting away of the centralized regimes, as that of France (note: in France 'autonomous ports' mean ports, led fromout the national government and with this are autonomous from the municipalities), or that of Italy (for the adaptation of the ports in this country see: Ridolfi, 1996) and Spain (for the adaptation of the ports in this country see Castejon Arqued, 1996). The focus is clearly now everywhere in Western Europe on an adapting of port mangement towards more autonomy, to make it possible in this way for ports to act pro-actively and commercially in a increased competing playing field, in making it possible for ports to take risks and to be directly accountable for that. This takes in exceptional cases even the form of a port, which functions fromout a private company (for instance: Felixstowe in the United Kingdom, fromout the Hong Kong Agglomerate Hutchison Whampoa) (Baird, 1998). An other variant,which is showing up in Western Europe, is that a private company starts port functioning, joining the port area complex with an additional complex. This is the case in the port of Genoa. The Fiat (car factory) - Gemini Group formed under the name Sinport and as part of the Fiat-impresit Group together with the Port of Genoa an Autnomous Consortium. This Consortium finances the new port terminal Genoa-Voltri. The participation of Sinport is 95% and that of the Port of Genoa 5% is, while the terminal is operated by the Voltri Terminal Europe company (Ridolfi, 1996, p.352 and p.353). The same kind of combinations of private sector and public sector ports is manifest in the port of Rotterdam. There Maersk and Sealand are involved in negotiations with the port of Rotterdam about dveloping and operating a dedicated terminal in the ECT port area.
Mostly, one notices in Western Europe in this proces of adaptation municipal ports distancing themselves gradually from the municipal authority and becoming more autonomous with regard to these authorities. This is a transition from ports as mainly social capital to ports as economic capital. The most consequent development in that direction is reached in the port authority of Antwerp, while the municipal ports of Rotterdam, and that of Hamburg are working towards a situation in which 'parts' or subunits within the port authority, alone or in collaboration with other (private) companies, start to operate more commercially and to participate financially in companies of transport or distribution, which have even their location in other nation-states in Europe.
In conclusion, the drives towards more autnomous and comercially developing and operating ports has as necessary complement a tuning of the ports with the local and regional setting. This implies nowadays more and more complex relations with a number of public sector agencies and with different levels of government, locally, regionally and nationally. This multi-agency and multi-level setting becomes manifest in a combined approach of port development schemes at the one hand and city and regional plans at the other hand. Rotterdam offers a good example of such a strategy with the Port Plan 2010 and the so called ROM scheme, an overall land use and environmental quality plan for the region of Rotterdam (Kreukels, 1996).
Intermezzo
What is the involvement of the European Union with regard to seatransport and ports in Western Europe? Perhaps, one would expect that the influence of the European level of governance becomes more important with regard to ports. The European Union (EU) plays at the moment a strategic role with regard to air traffic and especially the airports in Western Europe, deregulating the regime of airtraffic and of airports, removing this sector gradually from the long established nation state dependency and protection towards a more free market functioning as in the United States of America. In the same way the European Union is even more successful in deregulating and liberalizing the sector of energy and of telecommunications fromout the basic target of an open inner market within the EU. However, with regard to transport, the EU is not very successful until now, because of the endurance of the national vested interests of the nation states with regard to road traffic, railways, and traffic of the inner waterways. This implies that the unbrella scheme of the Trans European Networks (TEN), that the nation states agreed, is a programme in general terms and not very operational and financially binding at the moment. The most important agreements are those between nation states about the Rapid Speed Trains, The so called Trains a Grande Vitesse (TGV). This results gradually in a network of these TGV trains from France towards Belgium, theNetherlands, to Germany, but also to Spain.
