EU seeks comments as future liner regulation takes shape

EU seeks comments as future liner regulation takes shape The European Commission is currently accepting comments from the shipping industry on how liner consortiums should be structured under new laws that ban liner carrier conferences.
   Those who want to submit comments about a final block exemption regulation have until Nov. 21 to do so. The current regulation expires in April 2010.
   'It is time to adjust the block exemption for liner shipping consortia to current market practices in the liner industry and to current antitrust law,' said EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, in a statement.
   The commission is attempted to balances the legitimate alliances and slot sharing agreements that carriers engage in with one another while staying true to the repeal of the liner block exemption in 2006 that ended conferences Oct. 17.
   The new regulation will 'aim at better reflecting the current market practice through a broader definition of a consortium and by aggregating, under certain circumstances, the market shares of inter-linked consortia,' an EU statement said.
   To align the consortia block exemption regulation with the general EU competition rules, it's proposed that only consortia with a market share below 30% should benefit from the exemption, the EU added.
   The draft Regulation is available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2008:266:0001:0006:EN:PDF.
   A technical paper explaining the proposed changes in detail is available at:    https://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/antitrust/legislation/maritime/technical_paper.pdf.