How do you see your current role and what are your core goals in your new position?

如果交通没有很好的组织, 或者不能在欧洲层面正常运作, 我们不能真正谈论团结人民和企业. We saw what happened when COVID arrived and countries started closing their borders; transport couldn’t function as it should. 和, 欧洲内部市场也是如此, 我们不会注意到交通工具的运作, 但一旦它停止工作, 其他的一切都停止了.

I really appreciate discussions with representatives from different transport modes, who would each tell me that their transport mode is the most important and should be treated better. But by all saying the same thing, they demonstrate that they are all important, they all matter. We need all transport modes for society and the economy to function properly.

The external dimension of my work is to make sure that every part of my institution, 以及成员国，甚至是其他国家, 也认识到交通的重要性. I’m thrilled to come back to the fantastic team of people working on European transport policies at DG MOVE.

Can you give us a snapshot of the kind of practical work that’s coming out of DG MOVE policymaking at the moment?

We have a funding instrument called the Connecting Europe Facility used to construct cross-border infrastructure projects. EU member states are relatively good when it comes to transport infrastructure in their countries, but it takes that additional push to make them remember that neither people nor goods stop at borders, 尤其是当这些边界在技术上并不存在的时候.

We need to continue working to reduce the transport impact on the environment. But since climate change seems inevitable, we also have to focus on climate resilience. We need to think about how new infrastructure can be built in a way that it remains resilient no matter what happens. It is also about resilience in many other aspects, including economic and geopolitical resilience. We need to think carefully about where we place our infrastructure and who invests in it.

网络安全是恢复力的另一个重要组成部分. 我们有一些欧盟层面的立法, but we are also working closely with the industry to make sure that this is a topic where we stand with them to make sure cybersecurity is properly addressed.

在经历了过去几年的供应链中断之后, 你认为监管机构可以如何增强物流的弹性?

过去几年欧盟的关键事件——英国脱欧, 新型冠状病毒肺炎。, 乌克兰战争——所有这些都直接影响了交通流量, 有很多不同的原因. I think this shows that we cannot come up with a magical solution that will make us immune to those ‘black swan’ events. But we do now know what a transport system needs to be sufficiently resilient.

一件事是充分利用信息技术. The information flow that follows cargo along the entire supply chain is extremely important as it helps with better planning and faster response. 公司可以开发非常有效的专有系统. But there must also be a way for decision makers and regulators to access that information to manage the transport system properly. That lies at the core of the European Maritime Single Window that we’ve been working on.

The second element of preparedness is that we need some spare capacity in the system. There was a moment when we literally ran out of empty containers because they were either stuck on the US West Coast or they were not leaving factories in China. We worked a lot on a land-based corridor linking Europe with China as an additional transport route, 当然，这条走廊经过俄罗斯，现在已经不再开放了. A transport system will never be completely resilient to external geopolitical factors, 但至少我们得找个备用计划.

How has the discussion on the sustainability of transport moved forward since you were first at DG MOVE?

大约13年前, we published a white paper on transport which put the topic very much at the forefront. So, long before the Paris Agreement we were discussing at international level about where we go when it comes to dealing with climate change. 我们明确表示，交通运输必须变得更加可持续.

当然，“可持续性”的定义随着时间的推移而演变. 即使是在环境可持续性方面, 这不仅仅是气候变化的问题, 这也关系到平等和生物多样性. I believe that the transport sector has embraced the topic and accepted that this is something they have to accommodate, 发展并使其成为日常工作的一部分.

When we agreed the IMO initial GHG reduction strategy in 2018 and the 50% reduction by 2050, 每个人都知道目标可以更高. 但这是关于开始讨论的. 今年7月，一个新的、更加雄心勃勃的2050年目标达成一致. 现在让我感到鼓舞的是, 最后, 在航运界，没有人怀疑这种情况会发生.

Is there anything that shipping could learn from other transport sectors about sustainability?

Somebody asked me a while ago how it is possible that we still have ships colliding at sea, 所有的信息都来自雷达和网络. Of course accidents happen, but sometimes they happen because ships don’t see each other.

许多公司都在研究自主航行以提高增长, but maybe we need to think even more about that in a way that goes beyond ships themselves, 连接到整个全球船舶交通监控系统. Shouldn’t we focus even more on using the technologies that are being developed to aim for an objective like zero accidents at sea?

So my challenge to all of us is, can we do more to significantly reduce the number of accidents? I know that accidents are not that frequent, but unfortunately, they are often fatal. 通常这些事故根本不应该发生. 科技应该能让我们使航海更加安全.