EU Port Services Regulation heading for the UK dustbin. Consultation process now running.

The Port Services Regulation 2017/352 Regulation (the PSR), includes provisions in the following areas: market access for port service providers; transfer of undertakings; financial transparency; charges; training and consultation; complaints and appeals.

The PSR has not been popular in the UK. In October 2017 the then shipping minister John Hayes told members of the UK Major Ports Group that the Regulation would be “consigned to the dustbin” in the UK due to Brexit”. But the Port Services Regulation was not immediately repealed. It was supplemented in domestic legislation by practical and procedural provisions in the Port Services Regulations 2019 (SI 2019/575) and in The Pilotage and Port Services (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 (SI 2020/671 which covers the situation as from 1.1.21.

The government’s view is that all the areas covered by the Ports Services Regulation are sufficiently covered in the UK by commercial practice within the framework of domestic law. The government intends to repeal the PSR as EU retained law, to revoke The Port Services Regulations 2019, and to amend the Pilotage and Port Services (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, by revoking those parts of the regulations that relate to the PSR and were made to ensure that the EU PSR remained operable after the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union.

 The government has now opened a consultation period from 22 March – 22 April 2022, https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/repealing-the-eu-port-services-legislation/repealing-the-eu-port-services-legislation#:~:text=The%20government%20has%20signalled%20its,worked%20properly%20for%20the%20UK.

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Professor Simon Baughen

Professor Simon Baughen was appointed as Professor of Shipping Law in September 2013 (previously Reader at the University of Bristol Law School). Simon Baughen studied law at Oxford and practised in maritime law for several years before joining academia. His research interests lie mainly in the field of shipping law, but also include the law of trusts and the environmental law implications of the activities of multinational corporations in the developing world. Simon's book on Shipping Law, has run to seven editions (soon to be eight) and is already well-known to academics and students alike as by far the most learned and approachable work on the subject. Furthermore, he is now the author of the very well-established practitioner's work Summerskill on Laytime. He has an extensive list of publications to his name, including International Trade and the Protection of the Environment, and Human Rights and Corporate Wrongs - Closing the Governance Gap. He has also written and taught extensively on commercial law, trusts and environmental law. Simon is a member of the Institute of International Shipping and Trade Law, a University Research Centre within the School of Law, and he currently teaches at Swansea on the LLM in:Carriage of Goods by Sea, Land and Air; Charterparties Law and Practice; International Corporate Governance.

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