Annual Meeting 2020 Assarmatori, l'intervento di Pierfrancesco Vago Executive Chairman MSC Cruise SA

First of all, good morning everyone. We heard President Messina, who rightly gave an idea of how these funds could arrive through the PNRR. My invitation is to be quite precise in the work and ensure that these funds are not spread everywhere. The importance is to target the docks, the structures, the ports that clearly serve the connections, the rail links, everything we heard, 5G, to increase the productivity of these docks. Clearly we have the docks and the breakwaters for new-generation ships of greater size, so accessibility to ports. My invitation is to concentrate. We have 7,200 kilometers of coastline with many ports, but we also need a strategy on which ports to target and where to spend this money. The environment was also mentioned by the President. Definitely important. We have a huge opportunity: 60 million passengers from the coasts and islands, fleet renewal, environment. We have a huge number of ferries, transport ferries for the islands, other things that did an enormous job during the pandemic; they were the ones guaranteeing transport of fruit and vegetables to our markets. Definitely important, we mentioned it before, to find a way to see how to do it, because the details matter: how to renew this fleet for the Mediterranean environment. Brussels has a very important policy on what will be the blue economy and especially the green economy, so this opportunity to renew the fleet, let's see how we can do it. We talked about ship repairs, cold ironing. I would also like to add to remember Venice as well, because it is certainly one of the ports that receives great attention. Venice and the Veneto region, the connections, the MOSE system that will work; there is talk of 100 days when the MOSE will prevent ships from entering, so that too deserves special attention. I also wanted to take inspiration from the comment on training made by the President and the Minister. We saw the award just presented to Commander Arma, to whom I give my compliments for the incredible work. I also went through the emergency, I know what it means. He at the beginning was the start of everything. He is an example of the great professionalism we have in the maritime field with our seafarers. At MSC Cruises, to give you an idea, we are burning cash. Clearly all our ships are stopped; the cruise division is burning a lot of cash, but we have not fired anyone. We also have an important fleet construction program: six ships at Fincantieri alone in the next few years, including one to be delivered in July. Earlier we heard about the economic impact on the country. I'm talking about an investment of maybe 4 billion euros, with a multiplier of three or four times along the supply chain. We are talking about one percentage point of Italian GDP. We are talking about jobs, clearly about seafarers. Commander Arma is a representative of this incredible professionalism we have in Italy from north to south. Many are at home; clearly the entire cruise sector has suffered a very serious impact from the pandemic. This opportunity, this extension of benefits to Italian seafarers – I don't have these benefits but I employ over 6,000 Italian seafarers. If we could continue in that direction, it would be very important because it means we can imagine with six ships under construction we will hire something like another 35,000 seafaring personnel, of which 15,000 could be Italian seafarers.