Compromís and Sumar, and also Podemos, reject the expansion of the Port of Valencia that the Council of Ministers will approve today. But neither the Valencian coalition nor the formation led by Yolanda Díaz have any intention of destabilizing Pedro Sánchez’s Government for this reason. Of course, Compromís will take the case to court. “We are clear that this battle will be won in the courts,” they added after the executive meeting held by the coalition yesterday afternoon. “Compromís begins a political, judicial and social battle to stop the expansion of the port of Valencia,” they added in a statement.
From Més Compromís, the main formation of the coalition, it is emphasized that “the socialists have broken our trust and that must have consequences.” For this reason, they will not hesitate to use all the parliamentary tools of Congress to “question the decision of the PSOE”; from introducing NLP to questions to Government Ministers. But it is recognized, also by PV Initiative, a party also integrated into Compromís, that this opposition to the Port project “cannot hinder the development of the policies of a social and left-wing government because the alternative is the right and the extreme right.”
From Compromís they applaud that “Yolanda Díaz and Sumar are with us and are equal to the situation” although they did not know what the direction of the vote of their ministers would be in the Council of Ministers, whose deliberation is collegial and secret. But they pointed out that in all the forums and media where Sumar representatives have appeared “they have shown their rejection of the project, even Yolanda Díaz met last week with citizen groups opposed to the project.”
One of the actions that Compromís plans to develop is to try to incorporate into the next General State Budgets, PGE, items aimed at alleviating the effects that the port of Valencia “has on the environment, especially on the Albufera and the beaches of the South From Valencia”. Furthermore, the coalition expects the PSOE to offer “a clear response to the financing needs of the Valencian Community and a debt relief, as well as the demands of the Valencian agenda.”
The decision of the Council of Ministers today was announced last Thursday by the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, after his visit to the Valencian facility. The minister stated that this infrastructure is “100% sustainable” and will serve “to transfer containers to the train”, which, he added, “will reduce emissions and help the environment.” “We will remove trucks that affect the environment and will help us in the decarbonization process. It is a great public-private investment and we cannot waste it.”
This is not the opinion of Compromís, which will go to court supporting the initiatives of the València Port collective to try to paralyze the expansion. The formation considers that the Environmental Impact Statement, EIA, which was made in 2007 “is no longer valid.” And they believe that with the modifications that have been made to the project “another one should be made.” For this reason, they will request the appearance of Óscar Puente, and the Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, to “explain how it is possible for” the northern expansion project of the Port of València to be approved “with an expired environmental impact declaration and with all the official technical reports against it”. The Government maintains that the 2007 EIS is still valid and that it responds to the environmental demands of the expansion.
The approval of the expansion will mean activating a public-private investment of more than 1,500 million euros that should make it possible to convert this powerful logistics node into the most important entry route for goods in the Mediterranean. The port of Valencia designed a northern expansion in 2006 that required the construction of breakwaters, docks to accommodate containers and an investment in access to the port.
The total cost of the infrastructure would be around 1.2 billion euros and it received a favorable Environmental Impact Declaration (DIA) in 2007: the work was not going to affect the beaches in the south of the city or in La Albufera. Until 2012, only the dams were built. The rest was left in the drawer due to the economic crisis and it was not until 2018 when the bidding document for the new container terminal, the port’s fourth, was resumed and approved.
The Port Authority, which recently changed its president, in September 2019 awarded the construction and management to the company Terminal Investment Ltd. (TIL), a subsidiary of the MSC group, which will cost 1,021 million of the total work. Another 542.7 million euros must be provided by the State. The port technicians, as well as the Valencian employers’ associations, assess that with this expansion there would be capacity to accommodate five million more containers in an area of ??137 hectares and 1,700 meters of docking line, an automatic and low-emission terminal that would entail contracting of half a thousand dockworkers.
It would be, in logistical terms, the largest hub in the Mediterranean for international trade, with the largest port for interoceanic container traffic, with the capacity to compete directly against others such as Barcelona, ??which it already surpasses in the number of containers, and Marseilles. MSC, the company involved, made a modification to the project to locate the terminal not in the internal waters of the breakwater, but in the northern part, thus favoring the arrival of larger and less mobile ships. Compromís, and the former mayor of València, Joan Ribó, with the support of Podemos, were radically opposed and demanded a new EIS to adapt it to the 2013 environmental legislation.