Representatives of shipping companies, ports and shipping companies from Germany and the Czech Republic are calling for faster action from the city in view of the consequences of the collapse of an Elbe bridge in Dresden. According to a press release, the tenor of a meeting was that too little attention was being paid to the importance of the river, which is currently closed there, as an international waterway. The administration was only looking at the bridge as a road, the demolition and decisions on further steps for dealing with the rest of the structure were taking too long. "Normal administrative action is not enough," it was said, also referring to the fact that debris has been blocking the federal waterway for almost three months.
The river is a "contractually guaranteed access to the port of Hamburg" for the neighboring country, which the city must take into account despite the disaster, said Saxony's former Prime Minister Stanislaw Tillich. "This is not just a German issue," explained Jiří Aster from the Elbe/Oder Chamber Union, which represents chambers and business associations from Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. The Elbe is part of a European network of inland waterways and the Czech Republic is dependent on the river.
