the Global Shippers' Forum renews the exhortation to the FMC and the EU to estimate the impact of the shipowning alliance P3



In sight of the pronunciamento, attended for next monday, of the American Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) on the new shipowning alliance P3 Network constituted from Maersk Line, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) and CMA CGM, the three main companies of the field of the line transport ( on 18 June 2013), the Global Shippers' Forum (GSF) has renewed the exhortation to the international authorities of regulation so that they inquire to bottom on the impact that will have the hires and the services proposed from the P3 on the market, on which it will be able to exercise its potential dominant position, and so that they bring opportune modifications to the aim to answer to the worries in competition matter.

The slid autumn the GSF had turned such invitation to the Head office of the Competition of the EU commission ( of 11 October 2013). In occasion of the last assembly anniversary of the Global Shippers' Forum, than the 10 have held and 11 March slid to Los Angeles, the delegates of the organization of the loaders and the shippers have among other things approved of a new motion to introduce to the DG Competition of the EU commission in which the potential restrictions of the competition are evidenced deriving from a sharing of the costs unprecedented determined from the P3 and the potential risk of collusion on the hires and the ability to transport because of the wide capacity of the cooperation previewed from the agreement between the three shipowning companies.

According to the GSF, the agreement of P3 cooperation Network it could "radically change the structure of the markets of marine transport of the container that serve the European Union". Moreover in the motion to the DG Competition of the EU the explicit GSF own worries about a series of issues relating to the European legislation on the competition raised by the P3 that among other things include its impact on other shipowning alliances which the G6 Alliance, constituted from the companies APL, Hapag-Lloyd, HMM, MOL, NYK and OOCL, and the Green Alliance, the formed from COSCON, "K" Linens, Yang Ming and Hanjin Shipping (CKYH), and potential effect to chain deriving from the cooperation agreement.

"The Global Shippers' Forum - the general secretary of the organization has explained, Chris Welsh - has placed a legal-formal representation to the EU commission on behalf of the shippers of all the world. The greater fear - it has specified - is the impact that the P3 agreement would have on the market. If the P3 had to continue in its current form, the structure of the markets of the containerized transport marine that serve the world-wide EU and exchanges would come radically changed, included the possibility to eliminate a effective competition". Welsh has remembered that the GSF has emphasized the vice president of the EU commission, Joaquin Almunia, in charge of the Competition, than, "in consideration of the lacked strengthening the norms on the competition for the field of the marine transport of the container in others you leave of the world, the field depends on the Head office in order to not only strengthen the communitarian right on the competition to benefit of the exchanges of the EU, but also of those of its partner commercial in the main markets of the world".