Brussels, 14/09/2004 (Agence Europe) - The Commissioner for Transport, Loyola de Palacio, is preparing a nice surprise for her successor, the Frenchman Jacques Barrot. As she announced in June, and just a few weeks before she leaves her post, Ms de Palacio intends to propose, for the second time, to liberalise port services (pilotage, towing, docking and handling). In the month of October, she will present a new proposed directive on market access to port services. This new proposal seems fairly similar to the one the European Parliament rejected last November, despite a hard-fought agreement in conciliation (see EUROPE of 21 November 2003 and of 1 October 2003).
The Commission's initial proposal had attracted the wrath of European dockers, mainly due to provisions on self-handling, which aim to allow a ship owner to use their own staff to carry out port services, instead of hiring professional dockers. In its new proposal, the Commission will allow self-handling to be carried out by the crew or ground staff of a ship owner for journeys using either sea motorways or short shipping routes (for example, between Community ports). For all other types of voyage, self-handling will be limited to ground staff. These provisions, which go against requirements of the Parliament, having managed to obtain the agreement in conciliation that self-handling should be limited to ships' crews, are likely to lead to further demonstrations by dockers. Unlike the previous text, the new proposal would, however, oblige suppliers of port services to obtain prior authorisation before being able to dispense with the professional dockers' services. The validity of this authorisation would also be reduced, and would run for between 8 and 30 years, depending on investments made by the service provider.
The Commission's new proposal will also keep a few aspects of the agreement born of the conciliation, such as: the inclusion of pilotage services in the scope of the directive (which the Parliament had initially set itself against, before conceding at the conciliation), but with the possibility for Member States to subject the authorisation to practise these services to strict criteria, affecting maritime security, for instance, or public service requirements; -the obligation for ports to provide Member States and the European Commission with information on their financial relationships with the public authorities, in order to avoid the possibility of certain aid leading to competition distortion.