The Algeciras Bay Port Authority (APBA), business associations of the port community, unions and sector institutions have completed the registration of allegations in Brussels to the named Emissions Trading System (ETS).
It is a proposal to amend the current Directive of the European Comission, integrated into the so-called European Green Pact (Green Deal), which proposes measures for the Marine transport with the aim of reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases 55% in 2030. A goal shared by the entire sector.
But as stated in the initial proposal of the ETS, the inclusion of maritime transport will have a “foreseeable negative impact” on the transshipments of the southern ports of the European Union, according to the Port of Algeciras. Exists risk of relocation of the transshipment stopovers in Algeciras in favor of ports like Tangier-Med, located with minimal deviation in the Strait of Gibraltar but outside the EU and totally outside its regulations.
Included in this system is a future emission control system of CO2 that the European Commission intends to gradually apply, in principle, between 2023 and 2026 to ships with more than 5,000 tons of gross tonnage with emission allowances and payment for surplus tons emitted by shipping companies, as advanced Europa On in August of last year.
The president of the APBA, Gerardo Landaluce, has warned of this risk: “This is due to the fact that a flight of scales to nearby non-European ports to reduce the payment of emission rights ”. Landaluce claims that if you really want to reduce global emissions “we must all have the same rules of the game”. For the Port of Algeciras, the proposal is conceived in such a way that “emissions will not be reduced while the economic damage to ports with transshipment activity in Southern Europe will be irreversible”.
The battery of allegations of the sector seeks that during the processing in the Parliament and the European Council they are established formulas that avoid distortion free competition with neighboring third countries and the initiative protects the European logistics chain. Have been submitted more than a hundred allegations, most from Belgium, Germany and Spain.
During the past summer, the APBA and the business associations of the Port of Algeciras, held a meeting with the general secretary of the Organization of European Ports (ESPO), Isabelle Ryckbost, to which they transferred the existing concern.
Both from the Port of Algeciras and from ESPO, the communion with the climate objectives of the Green Deal, but also the devastating economic effects that the application of the initial proposal would have on this side of the Strait. Since then, through meetings and conferences, the APBA has carried out an incessant activity to raise awareness in the sector.
In turn, the Port of Algeciras has recently joined the initiative Call to Action already looking for the total decarbonization of maritime transport for 2050.
Coordinadora also alleges
The Union Coordinator The State of Sea Workers is among the entities that have registered allegations to the proposed Regulation, considering that there is a possible loss of competitiveness of Spanish ports compared to neighboring ports that are not part of the EU. They also see a possible loss of their international influence by losing transfers, as well as a negative impact on employment and the country’s economy.
The trade union center cites as ports that would benefit from this factor of competition the Moroccans from Tangier-Med and Casablanca in Morocco. But also to the docks of Felixstowe, Southampton, London and Liverpool, in the United Kingdom; Ambarli and Mersin in Turkey; Ashdood and Haifa, en Israel; Beirut, in Lebanon; Port Said and Damietta in Egypt y Odessa, en Ukraine.
Coordinator recognizes and positively values the role of Green Pact as an initiative for economic and social transformation, although it sees negative loopholes for international shipping. “It would mean the destruction of thousands of jobs and greater foreign dependence on the European Union,” warns the central headed by Antolín Goya.
In the brief of allegations, Coordinadora points out that the Spanish port system ranks ninth in global maritime transport connectivity and third at the European level, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Likewise, it is highlighted that the volume of goods handled in transshipment in the Spanish ports of Algeciras, Valencia, Barcelona and Las Palmas, being connected to the main world maritime trade routes, accumulate more than four nine million transshipment containers in 2019 and 2020.
The proposed changes “would place the transshipment activity of Spanish ports at clear disadvantage in front of non-community ports close, as this regulation fully affects all maritime traffic within the European Economic Area (EEA) and 50% of emissions in EEA voyages to ports outside this Area “.
For Coordinadora, the main Spanish ports compete with nearby ports that do not belong to the European community in such a way that an increase in the cost of transshipment stopovers in Spanish ports it would mean “a significant loss of traffic per line and the loss of private investments in ports” with the consequent reduction in jobs in the different subsectors that make up port activity and the obsolescence of the port system.
– .
