engleski

NEW BLOCK EXEMPTION REGULATION FOR LINER SHIPPING CONSORTIA

Liner shipping involves the transport of cargo, chiefly by container, on regular basis to ports on a particular geographic route, known as a "trade". Consortia are forms of operational cooperation between liner shipping companies with the view to providing a joint maritime cargo transport service. The cooperation within consortium must be limited to operational cooperation, notably sharing space (capacity) on their vessels, so the members of a consortium market their services and fix their prices individually. Consortia are generally found to restrict competition because capacity is the key competition parameter that influences on prices of the transport service. However, consortia enable more efficient use of vessel capacity thus helping to improve the service that would be offered by each of the members individually. Customers receive benefit from such cooperation as long as the consortium is subject to effective competition. Article 101/1 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) regulates the prohibited agreements, agreements which aren't subject to effective competition. Those agreements can be exempted from the prohibition prescribed in Article 101/1 TFEU if they fulfil four conditions laid down in Article 101/3 of the TFEU. The new Consortia block exemption Regulation No 906/2009 sets out different conditions compared to former Regulation No 823/2000 that consortia agreements need to fulfil in order to benefit from an exemption from the prohibition enshrined in Article 101/1 TFEU. These conditions are being analysed in this paper.

liner shipping; consortia; block exemption Regulation; market share

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