The European Tugowners Association (ETA) together with other stakeholders has taken a clear joint stand in relation to Consortia Block Exemption Regulations.
Tug operators worldwide are continuing to report increasing pressure of towage rates, particularly in the port shiphandling sector a trend that, in the area of container ship handling some observers are linking to the increasing alliances between carriers including where they favour global agreements with tug operators to provide towage services in more than one port.
Recently, organisations representing the main logistics industry stakeholders including: shipping lines, shippers, freight forwarders, terminal operators, labour and port authorities (a group that includes towage service providers) as well as EU national maritime authorities met at a roundtable meeting in Paris hosted by the International Transport Forum.
The objective of the meeting was to exchange views and positions that could be relevant for the ongoing review of EU Consortia Block Exemption Regulation, assessing the validity of the regulation which provides the shipping industry a generous exemption from normal competition rules.
A group of associations and service providers including ETA all agreed that market developments that have occurred over the last five years justify an in-depth review of the regulatory framework, something not done since 2009. They also consider that the current framework has become obsolete given that most of the carriers operate in alliances and that market concentration is increasing.
The associations consider the condition of the exemption, to provide benefits to the customers is no longer met as neither service quality nor productivity have improved over the years. Instead, users of liner shipping services and their service providers have suffered from an increasingly unbalanced market situation since carriers entered into major cooperation agreements.
In this regard, reference was made to the recent ITF report “The Impact of Alliances in Container Shipping” which has concluded that “the impacts of alliances on the containerised transport system taken as a whole seem to be predominantly negative.”
The associations therefore jointly concluded that the Commission should repeal the Consortia Block Exemption Regulations unless a revised regulatory framework clarifying the current BER is adopted. In this respect, some of the associations have already submitted their detailed positions to the European Commission or will do so shortly.
By Peter Barker
