Berlin An alliance of industry, trade and the mobility economy is increasing the pressure on Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) to reform the Waterways and Shipping Administration (WSV) with its 12,000 employees. “In order to ensure the efficiency of the waterway system, investments must be prioritized in the short term, processes streamlined and planning and approval procedures accelerated,” says an “impulse paper” by the “Waterway System Initiative”. The paper is available to the Handelsblatt.
The administration must “build three times more locks and bridges and around twenty times more weirs than in previous years,” it said. This is the only way to resolve the redevelopment backlog. According to the initiative, the WSV currently creates 0.8 locks and five bridges as well as 0.15 weirs per year.
The requirements were largely developed by the Federal Association of German Industry and the Main Association of the German Construction Industry together with the Federal Association of Public Inland Ports (BÖB).
The chemical industry (VCI) also belongs to the alliance, which transports many goods via the Rhine and the canal network. The industry complains that the rivers are neither optimized for low water phases nor that locks are sufficiently renovated.
A total of 21 associations have signed the document, including the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce. They consider it worth considering transferring the areas of administration responsible for the construction and operation of the infrastructure to a private company. However, this is not the focus of the considerations. “It is important that money is available beyond the classic budget year, that investments are prioritized and that the WSV manages its funds and staff in an agile manner,” said BÖB Managing Director Marcel Lohbeck.
Parliamentarians discuss the proposals of the business associations
The coalition politicians want to discuss the association’s paper next Monday. To this end, the parliamentary group for inland navigation has invited to a “technical discussion”.
Every tenth weir and every fifth lock was built before 1900.
(Photo: dpa)
The experts want to talk for three hours, moderated by reporters Mathias Stein (SPD), Lukas Benner (Greens) and Bernd Reuther (FDP), about “modern leadership” and “efficient performance of tasks” and about how the WSV can become an “attractive employer”. as stated in the invitation. The head of Via Donau, Hans-Peter Hasenbichler, will also speak. In 2005, Austria transferred the administration of the Danube to a private company.
Federal Transport Minister Wissing should not like all this. He rejects a major WSV reform, especially a privatization debate. Instead, he commissioned a “task review” with external consultants from Roland Berger. The aim is to optimize the internal processes of the administration, as the ministry said. Results should be available by the end of June.
For politicians in the coalition, this is not happening fast enough. It has been known for a year that the President of the WSV will retire in January and that the responsible department head will follow in the middle of the year, it said.
The parliamentarians see this as an opportunity for innovations, such as a “broad-based management” of the WSV. As with the federal Autobahn GmbH, it could consist of a managing director for the construction and rehabilitation of the infrastructure, one for finances and one for personnel.
Minister Wissing, however, first wants to clearly formulate the goal and strategy for the waterways and shipping administration before making a personnel decision for the management of the house, as he recently explained in internal rounds.
“The goal must be to further develop the waterways and keep them in order,” said SPD politician Stein. Like the alliance, he suggested that the 17 local WSV offices should be allowed to make more decisions again and no longer the head office. “We have to make more pragmatic decisions on the spot and use the potential of the district authorities.” Stein himself was active in the administration as a trained hydraulic engineer.
Locks and weirs are more than 100 years old
Despite sufficient funds for investments and personnel, the modernization backlog has increased in recent years, reported Stein. This shows that the call for more money alone is not enough, nor is a kind of waterway GmbH. “We need an agile administration – without privatization.” This includes, for example, digitizing the lock operation. Management is a long way from that. “There has to be a jolt through the WSV,” demanded Stein.
Wissing rejects a major WSV reform, especially a privatization debate.
(Photo: IMAGO/Political Moments)
The economic alliance refers to the climate-friendly transport by inland waterway. The government has set itself the goal of almost doubling the ship’s market share in freight transport from 6.9 to 12 percent by 2030. This requires a “more reliable, more efficient” infrastructure inland and on the coasts.
In the current structure, the administration cannot plan, control and prioritize in the long term. Therefore, as with the railways, the associations are demanding either long-term financing agreements or a fund. “At least two billion euros” should be available annually.
The Federal Association of German Inland Shipping (BDB) and the Verdi service union are also demanding the same amount of money. You recently pointed out that the WSV had already been reformed in recent years and that the problem was the outdated infrastructure.
Every tenth weir and every fifth lock was built before 1900. About half of the weirs and 60 percent of the locks were built before 1950. “Every day there is a threat of a lock or weir system relevant to the system collapsing and with it the blocking of an entire waterway,” warn the BDB and Verdi.
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