- The registration tax will be the subject of a complaint filed by ANEN and AEGY before the EC
- Recreational nautical will have its own Functional Area within the DGMM
- Sustainability will mark the future of business innovation in the nautical sector
- Nautical tourism begins to be projected as a future Nautical Tourism Product Club
If drawing up the agenda of the nautical sector for the horizon 2020 was the objective of the VII Nautical Congress, without a doubt, ANEN has collected during the past days 14 and 15, in Palma, the strategic lines that will allow it to draw up an action plan, and that as already announced during the event, it has started in certain priority areas for the sector.
In the 7th edition of the Congress, which has seen off Palma as the best in its history in terms of attendance record and manifest satisfaction of the attendees in terms of content, it was possible not only to gather but also to involve and start firm commitments from support to the sector by the different public administrations that have participated and attended the Congress.
Representatives of two key Ministries for recreational boating, Development and industry, Commerce and Tourism; and one more year, the Government of the Balearic Islands, have shaken hands with the sector and publicly stated that the nautical industry, in all its areas, is strategic for the economy. They have valued the effort that companies in the sector have made after the crisis and highlighted the employment and entrepreneurship opportunities that sailing offers in Spain.
Making a summary of all the contents covered in the event would be very ambitious and we would leave so many interesting topics for each other in the inkwell. But we do want to collect in this chronicle the main conclusions and messages transmitted in the Congress that have made us reflect on the positive aspects, which those of us who are part of the sector should take as references to direct the 2019-2020 business strategies, and above all Take note that a positive change in attitude is necessary, as Víctor Küppers recommended, which aroused the enthusiasm of all those present. Nautical industry, in all its areas, is strategic for the economy. They have valued the effort that companies in the sector have made after the crisis and highlighted the employment and entrepreneurship opportunities that sailing offers in Spain.
Within the framework of the national economy, we are the OECD country with the best performance in exports in the last five years, which is due to companies whose business model is based on competitiveness and not on low wages. This was one of the messages to highlight that Professor Antón Costas conveyed to us in his brilliant analysis of the economic situation in Spain.
In the international context, he warned of the change in the model that global growth is going through, which in the future will not come through foreign trade but rather through the growth of domestic demand. With this reflection, in the opinion of Costas, we have reason to think that we are in a moment of economic stability.
Faced with this stability, the analysis of Brexit and its possible implications for nautical -another of the most applauded round tables in Congress- offered us the vision of the experts: we are in a period of uncertainty, especially for exports and imports and any scenario is possible. We must be prepared.
The registration tax will be the subject of a lawsuit filed by ANEN and AEGY before the EC, as announced by Miguel Ángel Serra, ANEN's tax advisor, during his speech at the panel on tax harmonization in recreational boating. With the internal channels exhausted and after twelve years of intense work with the Spanish public administrations, without effective results, ANEN together with AEGY have filed a claim with the EC, posing the registration tax as an anachronistic and unfair tax and arguing that its elimination will mean an increase in productivity and competitiveness for the sector that would exceed tax revenues.
From the autonomous administration, María Antonia Truyols, Director of the Tax Agency of the Balearic Islands, expressed her position of support for the elimination of the tax, as she already expressed in the V Nautical Congress, proposing it to the central Government and doing it again this year to through the processing of the Special Regime of the Balearic Islands (REIB).
Recreational nautical will have its own Functional Area within the DGMM. This was the great news that the director general of the Merchant Marine, Benito Núñez Quintanilla, announced during his speech in Congress on Friday the 15th. It is about responding to the sector's request for the creation of a nautical pleasure, within the DGMM, which brings together all regulatory and technical issues that affect recreational nautical. And although this new area will not be a subdirectorate as such, it does have the objective of speeding up procedures, unifying criteria and maintaining the extraordinary collaboration between the sector and the DGMM, which, as the Director General expressed, has achieved in the last eight years that nautical has become one of the lines of action of this Administration, which to deal with and worry about.
Benito Núñez Quintanilla reviewed the current regulations, such as the future Royal Decree establishing authorizations attached to nautical qualifications for the management of pleasure boats and updating the safety measures in the use of jet skis, which expected to be in force for the next nautical season.
Sustainability, a great challenge for the sector on which we have to reflect and act. Sailors are the most interested in the protection of the marine environment, it is a reality that has been made clear in Congress. But now it is necessary to take action and promote the commitment of our companies with initiatives aimed at preserving the environment, integrating it into their strategies as an unavoidable line of action. An example to follow of an initiative in this line is that undertaken by the French association APER, to solve the problem of recycling and scrapping disused pleasure boats, whose representative Donal Dubois presented on Thursday.
Nautical tourism gains prominence for the Administration, through the future Nautical Tourism Product Club. This future initiative is the result of the work carried out by ANEN with the Secretary of State for Tourism since the end of 2018, and whose Head of the New Product Development Area, Jorge Esteban, presented as the formula that this Administration is committed to promoting outside tourism resources of a given sector.
This is a great challenge for the Spanish nautical sector and for the tourism sector, but for whose development there is already a direct dialogue between the sector, represented by ANEN, with the Secretary of State for Tourism, as well as a definition of Nautical Tourism. All this would materialize in the aforementioned Product Club, whose first project would be that of the Northern Spain Nautical Tourism Product Club, which has the collaboration of North Marinas, and which will subsequently be extended to other areas of the Spanish geography. . From the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, the support and commitment to the nautical sector in this task has been evident, especially with the closing of the Congress by the Secretary of State for Tourism, Isabel María Oliver.
The role of large yachts in the nautical sector, as in previous editions, was not lacking with the data provided by the AEGY representatives on the second day and their importance within the economy, especially in the Balearic Islands.
From the point of view of technical improvements, in the recently closed edition of the Congress the new models of contracts for the purchase and sale of pleasure boats were presented, another of the demands of the sector whose commitment was announced last year in the 6th edition of the Congress . Last Thursday, with the contributions of legal experts at the round table held on this topic, this commitment was fulfilled and the link to access the documents will be announced shortly from ANEN.
From this moment on, the ANEN team begins to develop the roadmap for the VII Nautical Congress, but not without first thanking once again the support and commitment of the event's sponsors, without whom this unmissable event for the sector would not be possible. .