Britain's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is currently oriented to recommend to the UK Secretary of State not to proceed to a renewal of the exemption for liner shipping consortiums compared to the general rules on the competition, thus leaving the legislation providing for this exemption to expire and whose vigor will end on April 25, date on which the validity of the European CBER Exemption Regulation for consortia consisting of line companies that last month the European Commission has decided not to extend the validity of the rules will also expire. ( of the October 10 2023).

The UK had transposed the European Regulation when it was a member state of the EU, which had been maintained (Retained CBER) even after its departure from the European Union and which, since the end of the Brexit transition period, provides for an automatic exemption of consortia of maritime carriers in line with Chapter I of the Competition Act of 1998 prohibiting concerted agreements and practices between undertakings that have the purpose or effect of preventing, limiting or distorting competition in the United Kingdom.

After initiating in August 2022 an examination on the Retained CBER, last January the CMA took over a proposal to replace Retained CBER with a Liner Shipping Consortia Block Exemption Order (UK CBEO), a new rule that would keep the exemption for maritime consortiums, and, in order to collect information and opinions useful to take a position to be submitted to the Secretary of State, activated a consultation procedure with stakeholders that collected the opinions of ten between maritime and port sector associations and logistics and businesses. On Friday, the CMA kicked off a new round of consultations that will end on December 15.

On the basis of the feedback received so far, the CMA has made the decision, not final, of not recommending the renewal of the Retained CBER, while on the assumption of recommending its replacement with the UK CBEO, the UK antitrust watchdog specified that two general conditions should be met for this purpose, namely-basically-that consumers benefit from the effects of exemptions for consortia to such an extent that they exceed the impact of any competition restrictions and that there are sufficient advantages to justify maintaining an exemption by category with respect to a situation in which the shipping companies should individually assess their agreements with respect to the competition rules, i.e. they comply with the conditions set out in Section 9 of the Competition Act of 1998 to benefit from an individual exemption from Chapter I of the British Act. At present, the CMA expects not to recommend the replacement of the Retained CBER with UK CBEO.