Following the completion of a formal investigation, the European Shippers Council (ESC) has said the European Union) Commission (EC) has failed to address the problem of price fixing among carriers because it has not made its agreement with container lines legally binding.
The investigation looked into whether lines had illegally colluded in hiking prices through public General Rate Increase (GRI) announcements and the EC accepted the 14 carriers’ collective offer to change the way they made price announcements to customers.
The ESC, however, does not believe that these new measures will be effective. “Although this new model brings some more transparency to the politics of maritime transport, it does not solve price fixing problems,” said a spokesperson for the ESC.
The ESC expressed concern that the new model may allow the parties to explore each other’s pricing intentions and to coordinate their behaviour. “Compared to the previous practice of publishing GRIs, the new model still enables the liner operators to test their new price policy without incurring the risk of losing customers,” said the the ESC.
The ESC also said that it would keep pushing for an in-depth review of the competition rules applied to container shipping.
The 14 container shipping companies that were under investigation, were: Maersk Line, Mediterranean Shipping Company ( MSC); CMA CGM; Hapag Lloyd; Hamburg Sud; Evergreen; China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO); Oriental Overseas Container Line (OOCCL); Hanjin; Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM); Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL); NYK Line; United Arab Shipping Company (UASC) and Zim Integrated Shipping.
