Strait of Messina, but how high are the prices of Caronte & Tourist ?! Fine Agcm

20 April 20222 years ago babelfish

Because the Antitrust Authority has imposed a fine of over 3.7 million euros on Caronte & Tourist, a historic private shipping company operating on the Strait of Messina

Those who have been lucky enough to travel to Sicily cannot fail to have noticed that the easiest way to move from Villa San Giovanni to Messina is to rely on a Caronte & Tourist ferry. According to the Competition and Market Authority (AGCM), the company that plows the Strait of Messina carrying passengers with cars occupies a position of absolute dominance that it has exploited to apply unjustifiably burdensome prices for consumers. For this , the Agency imposed a fine of over 3.7 million euros on C&T.

La Caronte & Tourist

Caronte & Tourist SpA is the historic private maritime transport company operating on the Strait of Messina, born from the merger between Caronte Srl and Tourist Ferry Boat SpA. The company offers a ferry service for passengers , with and without cars, and for vehicles commercial, on the routes Villa San Giovanni / Messina-Rada San Francesco and Villa San Giovanni / Messina- Tremestieri. The company is also active, directly or through subsidiaries, on the route connecting Messina to Salerno and on the connections between Sicily and the smaller Sicilian islands (Ustica, Aeolian and Egadi). The company holds equity investments, including controlling interests, in various companies active in the maritime transport sector, including the logistics and port operations, shipbuilding, shipping agencies, terminal management sectors.

The investigation by the AGCM on Caronte & Tourist

The investigation by the Antitrust Authority began on July 28th , on the basis of a report from a consumer. The Agency carried out an evaluation of the pricing policy applied by C&T to passenger ferry services with wheeled vehicles along the VSG-MRSF route, where the company enjoys a de facto monopoly position . Thanks to its dominant position, C&T would impose unjustifiably high purchase prices for travel tickets on consumers, causing discriminatory effects for those traveling alone with a car in tow compared to groups of more passengers traveling across the Strait with the same car.

The study of the Ministry of Transport

According to a study by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility , the integrated metropolitan area of the Strait includes the urban system of Messina and Reggio. The connection services in the Strait area constitute an intermodal continuation of transport between the Sicilian and Calabrian sides allowing, in addition to the boarding of pedestrians, also the transport of cars and private vehicles, as well as vans / trucks (heavy vehicles) used for the transport of goods. According to the study, the identification of the integrated metropolitan area of the Strait identifies a specific catchment area of the crossing services. The study attributes particular importance to the Strait area also from a European perspective , as it is affected by the Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor of the TEN-T (Trans-European Transport Network).

Criticalities of infrastructures and services

The study by the Ministry of Infrastructures and Sustainable Mobility highlights the presence of numerous criticalities both from an infrastructural and transport service point of view. In particular, the analyzes carried out by the Ministry reveal:

the low quality of the passenger terminals (pre-boarding, boarding and ticketing),
the low accessibility of railway stations and maritime terminals (mixed use of urban roads),
the inadequacy of the number / quality of landings (which does not allow real competition in the market of several operators),
a low resilience of the system to peak / peak phenomena (congestion on the local access roads to the port).

The analysis of excessive burden

The AGCM has developed the investigation activity by acquiring information from C&T, from the Authority of the Port System of the Strait (hereinafter, also 'AdSP' or 'Port Authority') and from Bluferries Srl (hereinafter, also 'Bluferries'), company belonging to the Ferrovie dello Stato Group and active on the Strait (with approximately 8-9 thousand trips per year). The Agency verified the excessive cost of the tickets marketed by the shipping company through a two-stage test: "the investigation ascertained that the tariffs applied by C&T to passengers with motor vehicles are disproportionate to the costs incurred (excessive) and this disproportion it is unreasonable with respect to the economic value of the service rendered (unfairness) ", reads the AGCM press release. According to the analyzes carried out, there is a " significant disproportion between C & T's revenues and costs in the provision of passenger car ferry services".

The benchmark

The prices were unfair, ie unreasonably disproportionate to the comparison with international benchmarks . The benchmark regarded 14 companies that mainly carry out maritime transport activities of goods and passengers by ferries, almost all operating in Italy and Europe, on routes comparable to those on which C&T operates. The benchmark companies are: Blueferries , Medmar, MOBY (excluding CIN / Toremar), Grimaldi Euromed, SNAV, Scandilines (Denmark), Destination Gotland (Ferries, Sweden), Tallink Grupp (Finland ia), DFDS (Ferries, D an ima rca), Irish Ferries division (Ireland), TESO (Holland), Sealink (Australia), Fjord Line (Norway) and Wightlink (United Kingdom).

Prices too high

From the analysis of the benchmark it emerged that C&T applies much higher rates than operators active on comparable routes, which also offer much more advanced services. The price differential compared to the benchmark is therefore not justified by the quality level of the service offered: the C&T fleet is characterized by a very high average age (27 years) and the ferry service is judged to be poor by the majority of users. According to the Antitrust Authority chaired by Roberto Rustichelli , the competitive offense is serious even considering the geographical area concerned, namely the Strait of Messina; the economic power of C&T; the type of service provided (in total, C&T offers a service consisting of approximately 20,000-30,000 trips per year), which is indispensable for the approximately 10 million people who every year – usually or only in the summer – have to cross the Strait of Messina with your own vehicle.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/stretto-di-messina-ma-quanto-sono-alti-i-prezzi-di-caronte-tourist-multa-agcm/ on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 06:03:37 +0000.