Lorries on ships: the State promised up to 30 cents a kilometre, it pays 6, and late
11 October 2026, 18:19
On Saturday 10 October the haulage companies of Confindustria Catania (the Catania branch of Italy's employers' federation) announced that their lorries will stand still from the 16th to the 22nd of the month. Among the reasons, besides diesel, is the Sea Modal Shift: the reward from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport for anyone who loads a lorry onto a ship instead of sending it down the motorway. Inter-ministerial decree 166 of 2023 provides up to 30 cents for every vehicle shipped and for every kilometre of road avoided.
For the journeys of the scheme's first year, which began in December 2023, the companies claimed €240 million in total. In a note of 15 June the Ministry let it be known that there is €52.9 million: the reward falls to about 6 cents a kilometre. The balance, after an advance, was due by July. According to Confindustria Catania it has still not arrived.
It is the supermarket loyalty card: a year of shopping, and at the end the reward is worth a fifth of the catalogue and turns up when everyone has stopped waiting for it. Meanwhile, at the till, the price has gone up.
What has gone up is the ferry ticket. Since 2024 shipowners calling at European ports have also paid for the CO2 they emit, by buying emission allowances in the system known as the ETS, and they put that cost into their fares. The money from the allowance auctions held in Italy goes to the State.
So the same lorry carries two environmental policies glaring at each other. The first promises it a reward for getting on the ship and taking traffic off the road. The second makes it pay for the CO2 of the ferry it has boarded.
Anyone setting off from Sicily takes a ship anyway, at least to cross the Strait of Messina. The reward is there to make them do the whole journey by sea, from Catania to Ravenna for instance, instead of driving up Italy on the motorway. Cut to a fifth, it becomes an invitation to go back to the motorway. The missing four fifths are paid first by the haulage company and then, if it manages to pass them on in its price, by whoever buys what reaches the island by lorry: Sicilian households and businesses that have never seen the Sea Modal Shift on an invoice.
Law 49 of 2026, which in April converted the energy bills decree into law, put the Sea Modal Shift among the expenses that can be paid for with the money from the ETS auctions. How much, it does not say. So the question, for the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport: of the money the State collects from CO2, how much goes back to those who put their lorries on board, and when?
On the ship to Sicily, CO2 is paid at boarding. The reward for leaving the motorway free, when it arrives, is worth a fifth.
This article was prompted by a news item published in ANSA on 10 October 2026.