The European Commission has published informal guidelines on the compatibility with EU competition rules of a sustainability agreement for the joint purchase and joint definition of technical specifications relating to for handling containers used in ports. Last December, the terminal operator APM Terminals of the Danish group Maersk had asked the Commission to provide informal guidance on an agreement with other port terminals for joint purchase and definition Minimum technical specifications for straddle and shuttle battery-powered carriers.

The EU Commission recalled that terminal operators reluctant to purchase battery-electric vehicles significantly higher costs, but also due to due to the lack of interoperability, in particular, between charging equipment from different suppliers, and has specified that the agreement notified by APM Terminals aims to reduce costs for port terminal operators by enabling to pool part of their future demand for these equipment, giving suppliers greater predictability on future demand and improving interoperability, in particular charging equipment produced by different Suppliers.

The European Commission has assessed that the proposed agreement does not raises concerns under Article 101 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union, provided that it includes some guarantees to ensure, inter alia, the possibility for participating port terminal operators to continue to independently purchase straddles and shuttle carriers, which the volume of the application pooled through the agreement is limited and therefore does not give rise to anticompetitive effects against suppliers of those products and that the exchange of information competitive differences between terminal operators participants in the agreement remains limited to how closely necessary for the functioning of the agreement.