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Let EU consortia exemption expire says GSF

Commenting on the European Commission review of the EC Consortia Regulation No 906/2009, the Global Shippers’ Forum (GSF) has said that it favours the Commission’s general policy of repealing sectoral block exemption regulations (BERs).

GSF said its recommendation was meant “to ensure that there will no longer be any special treatment of the maritime sector under EU competition law,” and added that “GSF therefore believes that the Commission should terminate the Consortia block exemption regulation, which is due to expire on 25 April 2015.”

The main objective of the EC review is to establish whether the conditions attached to the Block Exemption Regulation on Maritime Consortia (the "Consortia BER") continue to be in line with present day market conditions.

GSF’s Secretary General, Chris Welsh, said:

“As it is now well established what the acceptable parameters of consortia agreements should be, there is no longer any obvious need for a BER ‘safe harbour’ as self-assessment is quite sufficient for standard consortia agreements.”

Accordingly, the GSF said the merits of standard consortia agreements will continue to exist in the absence of any block exemption regulation, since self-assessment arrangements under the Horizontal Competition Guidelines will cover good agreements that genuinely confer benefits to shippers through reduced costs, lower rates and extended and enhanced services.

Mr Welsh added:

“GSF strongly believes that the P3 Global Alliance Agreement shows that carriers do not need the consortia block exemption to plan their co-operation. Consortia agreements above a 30% market share threshold fall outside the consortia exemption and are subject to self-assessment, in any event. It is not necessary to have a block exemption to indicate that consortia agreements between parties with market power need to carry out self-assessment.”
Source: Global Shippers Forum