The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the liner shipping industry offers multimodal
transport services in Europe and what types of regulatory constraints exist in European
legislation that may restrict the provision of door-to-door operations by liners companies.
A description of two model of multimodal transport systems currently offered by liner
operators servicing the European trade is provided as well as a discussion on European
transport and competition rules related to transport services, such as Article 81 and 82 of
the Treaty of Rome (as amended by the Treaty of Amsterdam, 1999).
Three cases relating to multimodal transport services offered by liner shipping
conferences servicing the European trade have been analysed, with a particular emphasis
on the provision of collective pricing for inland services when conference members are
offering multimodal transport. These three cases clearly show that the European
Commission is against multimodal transport price fixing, especially during the inland
transport leg, while at the same time accepting the notion of ‘not-below-cost’ rule when
conferences provide the inland leg of their multimodal transport service.