The central Europe area disposes of extensive inland waterways which in all cases underperform in terms of utilisation of their capacities for freight transport and the transport performance of these waterways is usually very low.

Major reason for the unsatisfactory role inland navigation plays in coping with the ever growing freight volumes in central Europe is the lack of functional integration of the ports with their potential hinterland as well as with other ports. Also function of tri-modal transport infrastructures is rather limited.

Main aim of INWAPO project is to activate this unexploited potential of waterborne transport in central Europe and also the role of the river and sea ports to achieve better inter-modality of inland and sea ports.

To do so the project will focus on 3 main systems of waterways:

• The Northern Adriatic ports (Venice, Trieste and Koper).
• The Danube river ports (Vienna, Budapest, Bratislava, Komarno and Sturovo).
• The Czech and Polish inland waterways (Elbe, Vistula and Oder systems), with an extension towards Baltic ports.