The European Sea Ports Organisation (ESPO) welcomes the Commission proposal setting out the new guidelines for the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). The proposal, which was published on 14 December, lifts the importance of the maritime dimension and the role of ports within the framework of Europe’s TEN-T policy. It defines maritime ports as the entry and exit points for the land infrastructure of the trans-European transport network and, for the first time, explicitly recognises their role as cross-border multimodal nodes which serve not only as transport hubs, but also as gateways for trade, industrial clusters and energy hubs. (....)