Consortia block exemption lobby sees little market concentration in liner shipping
The current exemption, which allows carriers to form consortia in trades serving the EU and was introduced just before Brussels banned the liner conference system, expires next April. The shipping industry wants an extension to this, arguing that liner shipping is not as concentrated as some observers have suggested
Container shipping lobbyists are hitting back at the argument that their industry lacks unique characteristics that justify an exemption from antitrust regulation and that it should operate under generic competition rules applied to most other sectors by the European Commission