Strasbourg, 14/02/2001 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission adopted a Communication and a draft directive on the opening up of port services to competition. The text is intended to encourage maritime activity in Europe to allow it to compete with the other forms of transport, on the basis of healthy competition, Commissioner Loyola de Palacio assured the press. Port development comes within the global strategy for development of an alternative mode of transport, to be specified in the White Paper on European Transport Policy to be adopted at the end of March by the Commission, she continued.
The directive should ensure greater transparency in the attribution of service markets, governed in most ports by private or public port authority monopolies. "The directive would be without impact in ports that already have competition between service providers", stressed Loyola de Palacio. The Commission thus plans to introduce "regulated competition" between service providers, "on the model of what is already being done for ground handling services in airports".
As pointed out in EUROPE of 9 February, p.11, the draft directive will make it compulsory to set in place tendering procedures for services proposed to vessels inside ports (handling, piloting, mooring, etc.), the separation of regulation and service activities when these are assured by one and the same port authority, as well as the creation of independent authorities responsible for attributing operating licenses and ensuring that calls for tenders are duly followed up. Allocation of concessions will be limited to 5, 10 or 25 years depending on the nature of the necessary investment. The draft directive provides, moreover, for the providers of port services being able to use the personnel of their choice, thereby breaking with practices imposing the compulsory use of dockers affiliated to the pool of the port concerned. "With the new directive, each port will have to play host to a least two providers of services", the Commissioner stressed. Any exemption to that principle, for space or environmental reasons, for example, will have to be clearly justified, she stated.