Itai Rabinovici, European Commission directorate general for competition, told a meeting organised by the European Shippers’ Council at the port of Rotterdam that his division was working on a technical paper to be released sometime in Spring that would look at both sides of the argument.
The paper will not include any recommendation as to whether to repeal the BER “because that is left to the EC college of commissioners, but it will say if the current process is working well or not. If it is not working well, there will have to be a change. If is working well, there will be no change,” Rabinovici said.
This was the first indication that modifying the BER was even an option and that the review was more complicated than a simple renew-or-repeal decision. The regulation expires on April 25, 2020, and the compilation and release of the technical paper, called a “staff working document,” is the next step in a lengthy review process.
But any decision to change the regulation will involve another lengthy process. Rabinovici said once a decision has been made to prolong the regulation, any modifications will be put to another public consultation, most likely over the Summer.
“We will go back to the public, assess the comments, and then it will go to the EC college of commissioners,” he said. “The college has time until April 2020 to decide on this before the BER expires in April, but in November, the term of the college commissioners will end and a new commission will take over. So we are really hoping that we will have a decision in a few months.”
The possibility of a change in the block exemption regulation was well received by Lamia Kerdjoudj Belkaid, secretary general of FEPORT, the Federation of European Private Port Operators. Terminals are firmly in the anti-BER camp, complaining that carrier alliances use their size to increase their joint purchasing power and force down terminal charges.
“We are now between two options: repeal or modify. As we heard today, the EC is seriously considering the modification of the BER. As terminals, we are pleading for a substantive modification of the regulation,” she told JOC.com. “We cannot continue with the joint purchasing behaviour that is used by the alliances whenever they buy terminal operations.”
Denis Choumert, president of the European Shippers’ Council, said the easy solution for the EC is to repeal the BER. “If they believe they have to take a quick decision before the next commission moves in after the November elections, it might be to repeal. But a much more difficult decision to be taken will be to regulate more and bring in a new regulation. That will not be simple to introduce and might need a few years to pass through the legal and political process,” he said.
Given the chasm that exists between those for and against the BER, Rabinovici said the objective of his competition division was to provide the college of commissioners with the most thorough, unbiased possible account of the current situation and possible next steps.
“We are listening to both sides,” he said. “We try to have as much objective data as possible. We are talking to analysts, collecting industry views, such as the two reports published by the OECD. It is an investigation and you listen and try to make a genuine effort to understand how it works. The next step is to have a paper. The public and political scrutiny is there. The endeavour is to have the most balanced document and the commissioner will decide.
“Are we going to make some groups unhappy? We will try to give the right advice, but I hope everyone will like the decision in the end,” he said.
