CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

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  • Inland navigation market observation activities are carried out by the CCNR in partnership with the EU Commission, the Danube Commission and IWT industry associations. In this context, the CCNR market observation team was tasked with the drafting of a study on the labour market in European IWT which was published in 2020. This report is therefore its second edition.
  • The objective of this report is to provide a European overview and where possible a more detailed country by country analysis of the IWT labour market in Europe, based on statistical data and qualitative information. Several aspects of the European IWT labour market were also examined, such as the main legislative development related to the European IWT labour market, the passenger and freight market structures, their respective economic and employment trends, education in the sector and its attractiveness, as well as company succession.
  • The years marked by the Covid-19 crisis are mostly captured within the dataset analysed in this report, enabling the assessment of the impact of the pandemic on the inland navigation labour market.
  • This report is prepared at a time when an unprecedented change in the legal framework has taken place at European level: Directive (EU) 2017/23971 (also recommended for the implementation in the Danube shipping) started to be applied in January 2022 and the new Regulations for Rhine navigation personnel2 came into force on 1 April 2023. This paradigm shift implements a mutual recognition of professional qualifications across the EU, the Rhine and the Danube. This is meant as a facilitator for the mobility of workers. The new framework introduces new career paths and modernises the acquisition of the qualification. It also facilitates the conversion from the maritime sector to the IWT sector. These innovations may impact (on mid-term and long-term) the labour market. However, it is too soon at present to analyse the concrete effects of the new legal framework on the labour market.
  • In the introduction to this report, it appeared important to outline the main difficulties encountered in the drafting process of this report. In particular, no exhaustive database is currently available to monitor all the labour market aspects of the European inland navigation sector. Depending on the countries, labour markets are also organised differently, and sometimes competent authorities are decentralised, or certain tasks are transferred to specific agencies. Identifying the right contact point, depending on the type of information requested and the geographical area under study, can therefore become a real challenge.
  • When many different sources for one and the same country were found, methodologies were sometimes different, making it difficult to deduce certain trends regarding the level of employment over time. Likewise, structural comparisons between different countries were not always possible, as the definition of an indicator or the exact breakdown of a variable sometimes differed from one country to another. Whenever possible, an explanation is given in the report as to the type of source chosen and the reasons for choosing one source over another. For instance, it was decided to use the Eurostat structural business statistics (SBS) dataset when providing an overview of the IWT labour market in Europe, as they allow for comparability of data between countries at the European level. However, the scope of such data is limited (i.e. employment in loading/unloading activities of goods in ports and employment in operation of transport infrastructure are not included; people working for companies with primary activities other than IWT are not counted as employed in IWW even if they work on a vessel) and can be incomplete in the case of some countries.
  • Another hurdle was the lack of reliability of service record books and certificates of qualification which was identified at first as an important source of information for this report. However, as it is explained in more detail in the report, such sources do not allow to differentiate between active and non-active workers and there is a high possibility that IWT workers who are registered in databases but not yet connected to the European Crew Database (ECDB) are counted twice, or even more. In this connection, the ECDB is expected to be of great added value to enhance the monitoring of employment indicators in the European inland navigation sector. It has been operational in some countries since 2021 (and officially from 17 January 2022, simultaneously with the implementation of the Directive) but could not be used for the purpose of this report as the information available on this database will remain fragmentary until all CESNI3 Member States are fully connected to the ECDB.
  • In light of the above, while all efforts were deployed to obtain as much information as possible, it was not always feasible to gather data with the same level of detail and based on the same indicators and methodology for all European countries.