Seatrade-Maritime: Negative impact of EU ETS seen on port connectivity

Published by Seatrade-Maritime

Puertos del Estado (PDE) suggests two remedies to the decline in EU port connectivity expanding the definition of transhipment ports and a Carbon Leakage Factor that prevents ‘route slitting’.

Observatory, a monitoring group established by PDE, scrutinised port calls from January 2023 to March 2026. The group said the EU ETS has seen direct port connectivity for North European ports decline 5% and Mediterranean ports fall 18%.

PDE believes that liner shipping operators have reorganised service networks to take in port calls in countries outside of the EU, mainly Egypt and the UK.

In its report Observatory, “Warned the trend was becoming structural, with services, terminals and contracts increasingly consolidated around non-EU hubs.”

The Middle Eastern conflict closed the Suez Canal while the restructuring of liner shipping alliances explained some of the shifts cargo movements, however, “These factors alone could not explain the high growth in connectivity at UK and Egyptian ports,” said Alphaliner, who added that an estimated 76% of the call changes were due to the EU ETS.

One example of a service shift saw Maersk alter the rotation of its MECL loop, which connects the US East Coast and India via the Red Sea. Maersk removed the westbound call at Algeciras and instead calls at Tangier, saving between €16-33 million.

Alphaliner noted that the report found: “Pure relay transhipment, where EU ports connect two remote regions, had halved at the EU’s West Mediterranean hubs since 2023 (-51 %), while Tanger Med had remained steady +5 %.”