A proposal for cooperation was received from the port of Antwerp as the coordinator of the EU transport and logistic project

16.09.2021

On September 16, Volodymyr Makukha, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Baltic-Black Sea Economic Forum, received a letter from the Belgian port of Antwerp as the coordinator of a large-scale international ePICenter project initiated by the European Union.

The port of Antwerp is the second largest port in Europe. Demonstrating the growth of cargo turnover, in the first half of this year the port has processed about 120 million tons of cargo. The location of the port in the central part of the mainland and the existing modern transport infrastructure connecting it with the main industrial centers makes almost the entire European Union the service region of the port of Antwerp.

The received letter signed by Guy Janssens, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, states that the above-mentioned European Union project brought together 36 partners not only from Western Europe, but also from the United States, Canada and even China and Colombia. Given the common goals and interests of this project with the one on establishing a corridor for effective cooperation from the Baltic Sea to the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea and Central and South Asia coordinated by the international team of the Baltic-Black Sea Economic Forum, the cooperation in relevant sectors was proposed. One of the key objectives of the ePICenter project is to accelerate progress in achieving unimpeded interaction of the European Union's TEN-T networks with global transport networks, concurrently ensuring effective integration of international flows and digitalisation in combination with environmentally friendly logistic and freight transport solutions.

This resonates with the tasks set by the international team of the Baltic-Black Sea Economic Forum. Relying on its basic partners in the Baltics - modern seaports of Gdynia (Poland) and Klaipeda (Lithuania), forming a reliable partner transport and logistic network to the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, where the basic partners are modern seaports of Kuryk (Kazakhstan) and Turkmenbashi (Turkmenistan), in tandem with the leading transport and logistic company JSC Turkmen Milli Logistik, the international team of the Baltic-Black Sea Economic Forum sees partners from Uzbekistan as one of the basic unifying sites in Central and South Asia.