Abstract

The trend toward globalisation, the increasing attention to environmental protection as well as the innovations concerning freight storage and logistics have led to a remarkable change in the set of functions served by seaports, enhancing their infrastructural role as junctions in the intermodal network. Consequently, the relevance of the European transport policy (traditionally concerned with issues relating to the expansion and the governance of the network) in influencing their functioning throughout regulation has dramatically increased. After a description of the objectives assigned to seaports by the common transport policy, the article briefly portraits the various entities operating in the port, together with the interests they represent, then analyses the problems regarding the competitive interactions in the markets they originate and, finally, focuses on the philosophy of port regulation originating from the overlap of the subjective and relational dimensions.