Worry of GSF and CLECAT because the EU gets ready to postpone the exemption for category for the containerized marine consortia



The Global Shippers' Forum (GSF) and the European Liaison Committee of Common Market Forwarders (CLECAT) has restated the contrarietà of the shippers to the delay of European Regolamento of exemption for category for the containerized marine consortia that the EU commission gets ready to grant for a period four-year-old beginning from the next April. "We are disappointed - the general secretary of the GSF, James Hookham has explained - of the outcome of the review put into effect from the Commission and we are not in agreement on various points of its appraisal". According to the Global Shippers' Forum, the intention of the EU to renew the Consortia Block Exemption Regulation (TO DRINK), "for not unexpected how much, it ignores the opinions of the exporter and the importers from and for the European Union and of their total suppliers and customers, that they are worried for the maintenance of poor levels of service in some fields served from consortia because of the excessive investments in the appearing ability and of lack of competitive pressures".

"The shippers - he has evidenced Hookham - absolutely are accustomed to analogous agreements of pooling in the field of the aerial transport, that they allow to establish understandings of tails-sharing for the same aircraft. However - it has found - these seem to be totally compatible with the norms of the EU on the competition without the need to resort to an exemption for category. What distinguishes - Hookham has wondered - the navigation companies, to which this form of exceptional treatment regarding the norms on the competition is assured".

"We - he has added the general secretary of the GSF - are not convinced of the reasonings and the conclusions of the Commission. To our warning the Commission has lost the opportunity to place the more important questions on as the field of the marine transport it is ended in the current situation of hires to a level historically low and of sovracapacità on many routes and if the repeated exemptions regarding the normal rules on the competition previewed from the exemption for category constitute a corrected remedy in the long term".

"The Commission - Hookham has still asserted - seems ready to support the companies of navigation for other four years without to comprise fully because. The European producers and traders, with their customers and suppliers of all the world, which users of the containerized companies of navigation, deserve a better support and a service from their guarantor authorities of the competition".

Also the CLECAT has restated own contrarietà to the delay of the current Regulations of exemption for category whose expiration is fixed for next 25 April. For the association, the proposal of the EU commission to postpone four-year-old the application of the norm "completely ignores the position of the users of the services of marine transport of line and of their suppliers of services, than until from the beginning of the review procedure they have supported that the current one TO DRINK is obsolete date the greater concentration of the market of the marine transport of line arranged with the employment of container vessels of exceptional ability".

"Meanwhile - it has specified the CLECAT - a condition important for the exemption, and that is that to offer advantages to the customers, more is not satisfied as during the last few years it is not improved neither the quality neither the productivity of the service. On the contrary, the users of the services of marine transport of line and their suppliers of services have suffered from a more and more unbalanced situation of market since the carriers have concluded important agreements of cooperation".

Restating that CLETAT does not have nothing against the shipowning consortia and alliances as such, the association has specified that "however it to light considers an exemption for too much generous category of the developments of the market in last the five years". CLECAT has announced that it will use the next period of consultation on the decision proposed from the Commission in order to find support useful to reach to a different decision.