ESC UPDATE\\\


The European Shippers Council has a new secretary general, Paola Lancellotti. She shares some of her thoughts on freight transport, Europe and the wider world with FBJ editor Chris Lewis.


Paola Lancellotti knows a lot about shipping and about the way Brussels works. Aſter working for a shipping legal firm in London, she worked for the Italian short sea council in Rome, helping to establish transport networks throughout the Med. “Even there, I was working at a European level,” she explains. Then followed a move to Brussels itself, to work for an organisation representing the maritime technology sector. But how easy is it to be genuinely


‘European’? “Well, the ESC for me is, first and


foremost a European organisation. That may sometimes be a challenge, but we must somehow make the effort. You need someone who is able to make things comprehensible to the membership and someone who is expert at lobbying.” The European Union gets a pretty


bad press in the UK as a meddling and sometimes not very competent bureaucracy, and possibly elsewhere. Is this fair? “Brussels’ processes are not well


understood by most people and most of what they do know is just the headlines. There is a problem in that it is not really well understood except by the Brussels experts – no one is helping to explain to the average citizen what is going on, so they tend to only know when Brussels finally comes to a decision on something.” There is a political process taking place, but because most people only become aware of it when a decision is made – good or bad – it can sometimes give the impression that Brussels is arbitrarily making decisions that affect peoples’ lives. “Don’t forget, I am a citizen of


Europe too and I also sometimes have doubts. But I think the EU is a long term project, it’s a journey and like any journey there will always be ups and downs.” Mind you, there are times when


Brussels can seem like a world in itself. Even the language that comes out of Brussels can seem strange; there are words like ‘co-decision’ or ‘modalities’ that only seem to exist in papers produced there. “Yes, there are people for whom


Brussels is the world, and there is the problem of a lack of trust – many people in Europe don’t feel as if they are being served by elected representatives.”


question that needs to be considered. The growth of


globalisation is


arguably one of the best examples of how markets can dictate events, well beyond the wildest dreams of politicians. Nobody voted for globalisation, “it wasn’t the result of any government’s policy decision. Paola Lancellotti’s role as secretary general is as a facilitator, to create


Paola Lancellotti But it is perhaps wrong to present


Brussels as a vast bureaucracy, Paola Lancellotti argues. “There are not so many officials considering the size of tasks Brussels undertakes and there are perhaps fewer than there were.” The EU works best, perhaps, when


it is dealing with subjects that touch directly on peoples’ lives. “I went to a very interesting meeting on city transport the other day, for example. Anything like that can help to fill the gap between citizens and the political process.” ESC is though catering for a


business to business audience, but Paola Lancellotti believes that ESC could have a role in educating the wider public on the importance of shipping, freight and logistics. “As consumers, we want things and we want them immediately” - but that has a consequence in terms of the price, and the cost to the environment, which are issues that citizens could and should be interested. The wider public could also


be encouraged to consider the environmental effect


of new


transport technology: “People wanted to replace the horse because the amount of mess in the street. But we found a technical solution that is producing a more complicated mess, an environmental one and now we need to find another.” One simple idea that needs to


be considered is that an important way of making transport more sustainable is to use less of it. “Should we be going around the world looking for cheap labour as much as we do at the moment?” A recent study by the Dutch CPB institute showed the way the complete life cycle of goods, including their production, supplying the packaging and the waste generated, spans continents and oceans, often several times. The debate on global sourcing is perhaps slightly beyond the remit of an organisation like ESC, but it’s a


the general framework. Decisions on specific aspects of policy are, ultimately, the remit of the ESC’s membership. And the ESC is addressing several pressing issues, explains chairman Denis Choumert, many of them concerning the environment. Shift to more environmentally-


friendly modes has moved from being a ‘nice to have’ to an essential, but the lack of progress with the European railway


system in


particular is frustrating, says Denis Choumert. Twenty years after the Single European Market was created, the dream of an efficient pan-European rail network seems as far off as ever, despite the efforts of the ‘TEN-T’ project. “I think the effect of the incumbent European rail systems was important. Europe wanted an open access network with common standards but work on that started only a few years ago.” Meanwhile, “ESC members are


trying to increase their rail share.” If these efforts don’t succeed,


there is a real risk that last parts of the European rail freight network will wither away, unless there was a massive increase in the cost of road transport. As it is, the European ambition to reduce transport emissions by 20% by 2020 looks almost certain to be missed. The new 2050 target is a tacit admission of that fact.


The EU’s decision to impose


drastic reductions on the amount of sulphur in ships’ fuel looks like a battle lost, but the next one will be on CO2 emissions from ships, Denis Choumert continues. “We don’t know how it will happen, whether it will be a trading system as in air transport. And we are also concerned of course about it becoming a tax that is imposed without ensuring proper use of the money.”


ESC is also following with great


interest future plans for road taxation, in particular the ‘Eurovignette’


directive that could allow extra taxes to be imposed. The ultimate end of all these


measures is that “in the end transport will become much more expensive. But if it is taxed too much, then there is the danger that we will put ourselves at a disadvantage compared with other countries like China or the US.” Competition within the shipping


sector is another concern. There are some signs, Denis Choumert assets, that shipping lines are trying to reintroduce the collusive practices that the abolition of conferences was supposed to prevent. “There are signs of coordination by shipowners, of services being modified at the same time.” True, the abolition of conferences in 2008/09 did lead to “a huge drop” in shipping costs”. But now, with fewer players in the market, there are signs of a more concerted approach by the lines. “At the moment, we don’t know how deep it goes, but it is something we are concerned about.” Turning to the ESC itself, Denis Choumert is also keen to have


Issue 4 2012


Navigating the Brussels maze need not be a nightmare 17


more shippers directly involved in the organisation. “We need to have more national associations involved and also to have shippers play a big role, otherwise it all ends up being run by the staff, who may be very professional but have not necessarily worked in the field themselves.” There is also the delicate question of how to involve those national


an issue a few months ago, with a number of operators cancelling export booking from Europe to Asia because of the sheer number of empty containers that needed to be repatriated to Europe. The situation has eased now, but ESC is naturally concerned about anything similar happening again. A pilot scheme of ‘grey box’


Denis Choumert


associations whose membership also embraces some categories of freight operator such as forwarders. This was an issue with the Freight Transport Association, which had a lot of carrier involvement and ESC is now looking at setting up a purely shippers’ association for the UK. Shipping service quality became


common-user containers – which could make the distribution of empties much easier - is currently going on in the Netherlands “and we are trying to set up something similar for France” says Denis Choumert. But it remains to be seen whether shipowners will be willing to give up their branding. The recent episode in which the


EU fined 14 freight forwarders for colluding on airfreight rates “makes us nervous” adds Denis Choumert who points out, also “that there is no possibility of class action in Europe, so recovery of any monies difficult. Moreover, the fact that there are still so many surcharges – on fuel, for security and so on – means that it could happen again.”


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