EC ruling puts SeaFrance into liquidation

The French Tribunal de Commerce took the decision following the EC ruling and also said a buy-out by an employee’s cooperative was not viable either. The decision could result in 1,100 people on both sides of the Channel losing their jobs, including 130 at the UK’s Port of Dover.

SeaFrance sailings between Calais and Dover were suspended last November and the company went into receivership when a £5m joint bid by Danish rival DFDS and French shipping company Louis Dreyfus Armateurs to take over the bankrupt company was also rejected by the Tribunal de Commerce. Another rescue bid by the CFDT Maritime Nord union was rejected at the same time.

The news is not well timed for French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is expected to seek a second term in four months time. He said his government was continuing to work on a plan to rescue the firm.

French transport minister Nathalie Kosciusco-Morizet said that Louis Dreyfus Aramateurs may re-appear in proceedings, adding two of its own ships onto the Dover-Calais crossing, crewed by 300 former SeaFrance employees.

A surprising alternative source of rescue could come via the operators of Eurotunnel, which carries some 40% of cross-Channel traffic on its trains and has announced that it will consider buying SeaFrance’s three redundant passenger ferries and lease them back to the employee’s cooperative, whose own bid has just been rejected by the French court. A Eurotunnel spokesman said this would remove the issue of state aid, re-establishing the service by providing it with commercial funding.

That suggestion prompted an angry response from P&O Ferries, which has some 30% of the Dover Strait market share. It threatened to report Eurotunnel to the European Commission over potential violation of European competition rules.