CLECAT and FEPORT, representing European freight forwarders, port companies and terminals, called on the European Commission to avoid market distortions in the EU and to unbundle the activities eligible for favourable tax treatment under tonnage tax schemes. The call follows last week’s decision of the European Commission, clearing the Italian maritime industry state aid.
As explained, the special tax regime will not only be applied to a shipping company’s core revenues from shipping activities, such as cargo and passenger transport, but equally to certain ancillary revenues that are closely connected to shipping activities.
In recent letters to Commissioner Vestager, the associations invite the EU Commissioner to clarify the state aid rules in order to avoid risks of competition distortion and to ensure a level playing field.
Specifically, the associations believe the Commission should ensure that ancillary services, which are also offered by other parties in the maritime logistics supply chain, are excluded from the scope of eligibility for tonnage tax and that the decisions including those provisions are amended accordingly.
The privilege granted to the shipping companies, allowing them to benefit from preferential tax treatment for their cargo handling activities, distorts competition between integrated terminals and independent ones. We believe that it is the role of the Commission to clarify the rules to avoid risks of distortion of competition and to ensure a level playing field. This is particularly important when exceptions to the general rules on State Aid are benefiting one sector as it is the case for maritime transport,
…Lamia Kerdjoudj-Belkaid, Secretary General of FEPORT, noted.
There are now clear cases that more vertically integrated carriers can benefit from tax schemes, which provide incentives for carrier haulage (door-to-door transport arranged by the carrier) rather than merchant haulage (where door-to-door transport is arranged by the shipper or freight forwarder), which obviously is not acceptable to us,
…Nicolette van der Jagt, Director General of CLECAT, added.
The associations therefore call on the Commission to follow the recommendations proposed by the ITF OECD report on “Maritime Subsidies” to amend the EU Maritime State Aid Guidelines and to unbundle the activities eligible for favourable tax treatment under tonnage tax schemes.
