He European People’s Party has conveyed its concern to the European Commission about the decision of two important European shipping companies to replace your stopovers in Spain to ports in North Africa, to the detriment of the Ports of Algeciras and Valencia. Faced with this loss of shipping activity, the PP MEPs Juan Ignacio Zoido and Borja Gimenez have sent a written question to the European Commission inquiring about its plans to continue making European ports “attractive and relevant.”
Popular MEPs regret that the departure of these companies “represents two flagrant cases of carbon emissions leakage” and a loss of competitiveness. With their transfer to Morocco, these shipping companies will be exempt of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme fees, which came into force in January 2024 and by which companies pay for their emissions.
Algeciras, a key pole for the Spanish economy
For Juan Ignacio ZoidoPP spokesperson on the International Trade Commission, Maersk’s departure is a “serious wake-up call to how companies can react if the EU taxes your commercial activity, while our neighboring countries do not. In the opinion of the former Minister of the Interior, these rates are especially detrimental to Algeciras as it has a port like that of Algeciras “very few kilometers away”. Tangierwhich does not charge such “environmental tolls.”
Last year, the Port of Algeciras managed to overcome the 100 million tons of merchandise moved for the ninth consecutive year. Much of this amount, achieved by the important operations that Maersk has in the Andalusian dock. For this reason, Zoido warns that “Algeciras is a key pole for the Spanish economy” and asks “to align environmental objectives with the competitiveness of our companies.”
Pollution continues, but from another location
The MEP Gimenez Larrazhead of the Transport and Tourism Committee, considers that it is a matter “critical both for the competitiveness of European ports and for the EU’s environmental objectives.” As the popular MEP explains, “operators that evade these regulations continue to pollute, only from unregulated locations, which weakens the overall effectiveness of our decarbonization measures.”
For the Aragonese MEP, the problem is threefold. Firstly, ‘this practice gives third countries a competitive advantage “significant impact on EU ports and airports, causing them to lose traffic.” Additionally, “it also undermines the EU’s efforts to reduce emissions and achieve their climate objectives. Finally, “it is presented as a geostrategic problem, given that the European Union could lose the logistics chain for the benefit of North African ports.
Given that the Commission has established priorities to guarantee the competitiveness of Europe, as well as promoting sustainability and climate neutrality, the Aragonese MEP urges the Commission to “make explicit the means to achieve these objectives.”
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