Welcome to the European School of Short Sea Shipping

The aim of the project is to help people to change and to bring about change and progress in society by promoting maritime transport as the basis for the development of sustainable logistics in Europe. By educating and training people from the perspective of what we do and who we are. By proposing an alternative set of values and setting ourselves up as an alternative to the status quo that we want to change or improve.

Creativity, understood as the ambition to seek new ways to do the things that enrich their accomplishment. We have recovered certain traditions such as training ships and we have incorporated a new concept: the training train. We have also incorporated the latest and most advanced training techniques. We provide a framework that brings together workshops, keynote lectures, and team work, allowing students to make the most of the infrastructures, operators, and Short Sea Shipping and Railway services and enjoy what five marvellous cities - Barcelona, Rome, Genoa, Gijón and Santander can offer.

Dialogue and interpersonal relationships are singled out as a fundamental key to progress. The ship and the train itselfs, and following the course on board, provide a convivial environment that helps to facilitate relationships. Trust must flow from these relationships and acquaintances, and this very trust provides the possibility to learn new ways of doing things in a way that is better for all. The courses themselves provide an environment in which ports, administrations and operators can meet and talk to each other, making it possible to improve the quality of service providing and customer service.

We aim to make self-determination the value that will allow us to decide freely and to pass on the values that inspire and move forward the construction of a European area for society, people, logistics and transport. Our classrooms must help to build stronger bonds with the European Union and to spread our shared philosophical heritage. We would like to thank the European Commission for its help, which has allowed us to provide the School with its current size and scope. The best way of thanking them is to make the most of this opportunity.

This project depends on the work and efforts of everybody concerned. To start with, we should mention the efforts of the organisers and the necessary essential contribution of the lecturers and the visiting staff from the different SSS Promotion Centres, Universities and Training Centres of the countries involved. The result of the courses will depend particularly on them. That is precisely why the School must provide them with everything they need so that they can do their job in the best conditions.

The commitment to defend the environment plays a fundamental role in this project. Comodal logistics is the most environmental- and people-friendly. The degree of success we enjoy in bringing this about will also be a success in terms of protecting the environment. This project was inspired by a spirit of cooperation among the different means of transport. This co-modality should provide an arena for seeking more reasonable ways to perform operations. Likewise, the project itself is a starting point for seeking out and researching into more efficient ways to protect the Mediterranean, which is our raison d'etre.

The school was born in Catalonia, and was founded with partners from Italy and Spain, and built with people from fourteen European countries. It is a common space in which knowledge must be transmitted in such a way that everyone taking part can make the most of it and apply it in the most efficient way possible. It should be the arena for an ongoing learning process allowing us to move forward to a better society.

This project motivates those of us who take part in it in a special way and we hope it motivates all those who decide to join us along the way.