European Maritime Space without barriers: a cost-benefit analysis approach in the Impact Assessment

In the words of the EC, IA "helps to identify the main options for achieving the objectives and analyses their likely impacts in the economic, environmental and social fields. It outlines advantages and disadvantages of each option and examines possible synergies and trade-offs" . An integrated approach for IA was introduced by the EC in 2002. It consists of a balanced appraisal of all potential impacts of a new legislation (economic, social, environmental), and is "underpinned by the principle of proportionate analysis, whereby the depth and scope of an impact assessment, and hence the resources allocated to it, are proportionate to the expected nature of the proposal and its likely impacts" . IA is an activity that may include a number of methodologies and tools; as such, it is not aimed at gathering a unique quantitative indicator of the impacts of policy measures, but at a set of different indications, not necessarily of a quantitative nature (which is the objective of e.g. Cost-Benefit Analysis), which define the various effects of the actions. In the case presented in this paper, which concerns the implementation of an internal free market in the maritime transport sector, the Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) is one of the tools included in the overall IA procedure. The proper “assessment of impacts” is one of the steps included in the IA. No restrain is given in the Guidelines concerning the use of CBA in order to assess the impacts of the policies. Still, CBA is a tool characterized by a widespread application, by a sound theoretical background and – above all – by the possibility to cover a wide range of effects of a project by monetizing even impacts which are naturally of a quantitative nature, and therefore by a high degree of flexibility of application. In the "Preparatory study for the impact assessment relating to achieving the internal market for intra-European trade using maritime transport (IA-EMS)" (PriceWaterhouseCoopers, CERTeT-Bocconi, 2008), performed on behalf of the European Commission, a methodology based on CBA was developed. The peculiarities of this methodology reside in the approach that is used to implement the CBA, given the wide geographical scope of the policy, and the peculiarities of the problems addressed by the new legislation proposal itself. Since the implementation of such European policies occurs on a (at least) Community scope, the sole use of bottom-up methodologies (such as the ones that generally are used in the application of CBA’s of transport projects on a local level) turns out to be troublesome, in particular for the estimation of the modal shift deriving from the implemented policies. The proposed methodology, therefore, envisages a mixed top-down and bottom-up approach, where “top-down” is referred to an estimation based on an aggregated result which is therefore distributed among specific measures, and “bottom-up” is referred to an estimation where unitary cost or benefit parameters are applied to directly measurable phenomena. Moreover, the bottom-up approach allows to take into account – even in the case of wider scope assessments – geographical and logistic peculiarities of services supplied throughout Europe. Indeed, the present CBA approach (bottom-up side) aimed at assessing the economic impact of the new legislation both in terms of "time related costs" (all costs proportional to the duration of port operations) and of "time costs" (costs connected with the time spent by freight during the entire supply chain involving port operations). A further peculiar aspect is the attempt to measure such economic impacts with a strongly demand oriented approach, i.e. starting from the real measurement unit involved in administrative operations in ports, which is the "bill of lading".