FEFC, TACA EUROPEAN COURT HEARINGS START

FEFC, TACA EUROPEAN COURT HEARINGS START    The Court of First Instance of Luxembourg will start oral hearings tomorrow about the appeals of carriers against the European Commission concerning key competition law cases in liner shipping.
   The appeal cases concern the former Trans-Atlantic Agreement, the Trans-Atlantic Conference Agreement and the Far Eastern Freight Conference and have been pending for years.
   The European court will decide whether the joint inland rates and capacity management of the former TAA were illegal and whether the agreement was a conference or, as the EC said, an agreement between conference and non-conference carriers. The TAA agreement was ended in 1994 and replaced by the TACA.
   The FEFC case will also deal with whether joint inland rate-making by conferences is legal in Europe.
   The TACA case will deal with the question of whether the European Commission was entitled to lift TACA carriers’ immunity from fines.
   The European court will not handle the main appeal by TACA carriers against the EC’s 273-million Ecu ($300 million) fines, imposed in 1998.
   The court hearings are scheduled to last three days, from Wednesday to Friday.
   The outcomes of the appeal cases will be watched carefully by shipping lines and shippers, as they are expected to settle continuing disagreements between carriers and the EC on the correct interpretation of European competition rules concerning conferences and multimodal pricing.