08-10-2014
An agreement on the Port Regulation was adopted today (8th October 2014) by European Union’s Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council. The document emphasizes in general new rules regarding the access to the EU port services market as well as the financial transparency of ports. As agreed, mentioned regulation would be applicable to all seaports included in the trans-European transport network (TEN-T) guidelines. Nevertheless, each Member State is free to decide to leave out some ports in the comprehensive network located in the outermost regions (e.g. Canary Islands, Réunion or Madeira). In certain conditions, they are also entitled to abandon the application of the rules on the separation of accounts to small ports in the comprehensive network.
As far as the Commission initially proposed, the financial transparency rules and exemption form market access provisions will be applicable to service such as, cargo handling and passenger services.
Moreover, minimum requirements for the provision of port services and limitation of the number of service providers are allowed to be imposed by both, Member States and port management units.