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The European Freight Forwarders Association (CLECAT), the European Shippers’ Council (ESC) and the European Logistics Association (ELA) welcomed around 150 participants, keynote speakers, and panellists at the Logistics for Europe event on 23^rd November, organised jointly to debate the challenges of European logistics and the need for enhanced collaboration between parties in the European and global supply chains.

In the ‘set the scene’ Christa Sys, holder of the BNPPF chair transport, logistics and ports welcomed the Presidents of the three associations Roman Stiftner, (ESC), Paolo Bisogni (ELA), Willem van der Schalk (CLECAT). They all expressed their will to collaborate to align their objectives, to build resilience and strengthen competitiveness.

Koen De Leus, Chief Economist, BNP Paribas Fortis spoke about the economic outlook of Europe with the need to accelerate energy transition and digitalisation to sustain Europe’s economy at times of uncertainty. High inflation, elevated energy costs, raised interest rates and a lack of labour are the forecasts for 2023, and the logistics industry will need again need to demonstrate its resilience. Inflation has peaked, believed Mr de Leus, and may settle and hover around the 2%-3% mark, and while US interest rates are rising, the expectation is that they will settle at around 5%, with the European bank rate just below that. Inventories are now at their highest levels ever, with stocks 95% full according to Mr de Leus, who suggested that the geopolitical risks to energy supply, mainly the war in Ukraine, would keep energy prices high through next year. However, he added, the pandemic had shifted the logistics paradigm from a ‘just-in-time’ to a ‘just-in-case’ approach, and he expects warehouses to be restocked.

Steven Pope, Group Head Trade Facilitation (Go Trade) at Deutsche Post DHL Group presented the latest trends in Global Trade. The DHL Trade Growth Atlas 2022 shows the resilience of global trade through crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The panel moderated by Anne Federle, from Bird & Bird LLP discussed developments in ccontainer shipping market structure affecting the Global Maritime Supply Chain.  In his online introduction, Olaf Merk, Project Manager, Ports and Shipping, International Transport Forum argued that the CBER is a tool of competition policy which should allow consumers a fair share of the benefit from the block exemption. It should not allow the complete elimination of competition in respect to a substantial part of the relevant market. He argued that the EU Consortia Block Exemption Regulation defines a 30% combined market share threshold for consortia and clearly explained how it is possible that the sum of the combined market shares of consortium members on a given trade route can be above 100% by taking into account the interlinkages between carriers and consortia. Mr Merk went on to note that this requires a policy response. Competition authorities and regulators should reconsider competition arrangements for liner shipping and improve competition monitoring (cross-border). He also referred to more attention on fair competition in door-to-door container transport.

A panel debate followed discussing whether the CBER still fit-for-purpose in view of industry trends such as concentration and vertical integration. Henrik Mørch, Director of Services, DG COMP, European Commission noted that the consultation phase of the review process into the CBER had ended, and preliminary conclusions, to be published in the Commission’s Staff Working Document’ as to whether the CBER should continue, were expected to be published in Q1 2023. The CBER expires in April 2024.

Jens Roemer, Managing Director, a. Hartrodt, asked why is the US Congress revising the Shipping Act if there is no domination in the market? Philippe Corruble, French of-council lawyer at Stream and professor at EM Normandie, argued that this is a global issue where different countries have different rules and hinted that oligopolies encourage anti-competitive behaviour regardless of the absence of collusion. International regulation was necessary in his view because the maritime industry had an oligopolist structure, with high transparency and high entry barriers that offered carriers powerful market influence through alliances.

A more detailed summary of the discussions and pictures of the event will be published soon.