Brussels, 14/06/2002 (Agence Europe) - On Monday, the Transport Council will attempt to reach a political agreement on opening up port services to competition. Under great pressure from their dockers unions, Belgium and Germany still have strong reservations over maintaining social rights. The United Kingdom, for its part is fighting to secure longer-term concessions for providers of port services and against the social clause proposed in the compromise text. A qualified majority agreement has not, however, to be ruled out: thanks to the exemptions and flexibility negotiated by Member states and the Commission, "each will be able to continue to do what they want", notes a European diplomat. The Netherlands has expressed reservations on the very need for such a directive.
On the call by German trade unions and the European Transport Federation (EFT), several strike movements to protest against the draft directive were announced for this Friday in Germany, Denmark, Finland, and possibly Ireland and Sweden. Belgian dockers went on strike on 7 June. The German Transport Minister was to meet the Union of Workers in Berlin Friday morning to try to defuse the threat of a strike.
Proposed by the Commission in February 202, the "port services" directive will impose the setting up of calls for tender for services proposed to vessels in port (piloting, tugging, docking and handling), the separation of regulatory and service activities, as well as the creation of independent authorities responsible for allocating activity licenses. The aim is to develop the competitiveness of European ports, while guaranteeing the transparency of selection procedures for providers of port services. The differences in Council relate to the following issues:
Field of application: there is agreement for the directive applying to ports whose traffic has exceeded 1.5 million tonnes of freight or 200,000 passengers over the past three years. The threshold is way higher than the one the Commission proposed, which limited the directive to ports with an annual traffic of over 3 million tonnes of freight and 500,000 passengers. Belgium, Denmark and Finland have reservations over inclusion in the directive of navigable waterways giving access to ports, inclusion proposed by the Commission at Parliament's request.
The text on the granting of licences provides for "Member states having to ensure that the relevant authorities may call on service providers to have prior authorisation", limited in time. These authorisations may be granted under the following criteria: 1) the professional qualification of the providers and their employees and the company's financial situation; 2) the security and safety rules of ports, their access, equipment and people; 3) social and employment criteria; 4) environmental requirements; 5) the development policies of ports.
Belgium, as well as, to a lesser extent, Greece and Portugal, want this prior authorisation to be compulsory. "If the granting of licenses is left up to Member states, there risks being unfair competition and dumping of social and safety rules between European ports", says a Belgian diplomat.
At the same time, the directive allows port authorities to limit access to a single provider of services, if the port has problems of space or for safety reasons. Belgium, Germany and Sweden want this exemption to be possible for reasons linked to a port's development policy too, a concept too vague fr the other delegations.
Duration of concessions: the Commission had proposed that the duration of contracts granted by a call for tender be limited to 5 years for services not requiring especially large investments, 15 for investments into mobile infrastructures and 25 years for immobile infrastructures (altering quays, etc.). The United Kingdom (where some operators secured leases of up to 99 years at the time of the privatisation of British port systems) wants the concessions to be 10, 25 and 45 years. The Presidency proposed as compromise: 6, 15 and 36 years. The Netherlands and Germany, which also would have liked longer contracts, have rallied around the Presidency compromise. The Commission, backed by Finland, wants to stick to the initial proposal.
The plan also provides for the directive having to be transposed within two years following its adoption (or the spring of 2004). France and Belgium are said to have wanted a 3 year time-span.
Piloting services: The text provides for including piloting services (guiding ships as they enter port) in the directive's field of application, but with great flexibility: 1) Member states may submit the allocation of licences for these services to the respect of "safety criteria and
particularly strict public service requirements"; 2) they may grant a concession to a single provider; 3) they may demand that this service "be provided by a person who meets equitable and non-discriminatory conditions defined by national law"; 4) the right of port authorities to impose the use of a pilot is offset by the granting of an exemption for captains of vessels that have a pilot's certificate, and exemptions for certain types of vessels according to "transparent" criteria.
This solution is a compromise with the Parliament's position, which simply called for exclusion of the piloting services from the directive. France, which had insisted that piloting should be excluded from the directive in the name of safety, seems pleased with the compromise. It would, however, like to introduce a motion specifying that the concessions may be granted for a series of ports and not just one port. Greece, on the other hand, still seems to have reserves.
Furthermore, Belgium expresses reservation about the maximum duration of concessions for piloting. The compromise presented by Spain provides for concessions of 8 years, while Belgium hopes for 13 years including two years training and eleven years professional experience. The Belgian calculations exclude experience acquired during training courses, says a diplomat from another delegation.
Self-assistance: The directive provides "wherever possible" for operators to be able to use their own personnel for operations that would normally be carried out by a service provider from the port. Germany and Belgium, which fear a general outcry from their dockers unions, call for the text to specify that the personnel used for self-assistance to be "regularly employed by the operator on the ground" or for it to be a matter of "the crew of the ship using its own material". Belgium and Sweden (where handling is the monopoly of dockers unions) trust, moreover, that the text will specify sailors can only carry out operations "on board ship".
Maintaining social rights: The draft text stipulates that "the Member States must take the measures necessary to ensure application of their national legislation, including national rules concerning the employment of persons by service providers that take on a license after selection procedure". Service providers should therefor undertake to respect the social legislation of the port country and to employ the staff of the previous service providers, if there is a change in service provider. France, Belgium and Germany above all insisted that this clause should be included in the directive, in order to avoid social dumping and the use of third country handlers at conditions that are inferior to those applied by the collective agreements for the sector. Germany would even have liked the text to specify that the new service providers should keep the employees of the previous service providers on during one year. The United Kingdom expressed, however, reservation about this clause, and remarked that a Member State could be taken before the Court for not having respected its own social norms.