On Tuesday 10 October, the European Commission announced its decision not to extend beyond 25 April 2024 the Consortia Block Exemption Regulation (CBER), which allows these players, under certain conditions, to enter into cooperation agreements, or consortia, to jointly provide freight transport services.
In August 2022, the Commission launched a review of the operation of the CBER since 2020, including consultations, exchanges with stakeholders and competition and regulatory authorities, and an independent information study (see EUROPE 12105/19).
The Commission concluded that the CBER did not promote competition in the maritime transport sector.
In particular, the European Commission pointed out that the CBER had only allowed carriers to make limited savings on compliance costs and had not played a decisive role in their decision to participate in a consortium.
In addition, over the three years of the evaluation period, the CBER did not encourage cooperation between smaller carriers and did not enable them to offer services that competed with larger transport companies.
For the future, the Commission therefore indicated that the CBER evaluation had not demonstrated the need for new sector-specific guidelines.
The Commission indicated that the expiry of this regulation did not mean that carriers would face legal uncertainty or that cooperation between shipping companies would become illegal. These companies will be able to assess the compatibility of their cooperation agreements with European competition rules on the basis of the block exemption regulation applicable to horizontal agreements and the block exemption regulation applicable to specialisation agreements, which apply to all economic sectors.
Link to the Commission’s conclusions: https://aeur.eu/f/8z0 (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)