Sea freight, similarly to air freight, is a market that is hard to capture as it is globally oriented. Therefore the results of both this chapter and the following one have to be understood as very rough indications.
With nearly the same absolute costs for fuel, interests, taxes and other variable costs, personnel and administration costs amount to the most significant cost drivers here. Therefore the differences between Member States are mainly attributed to deviations in labour costs. In Bulgaria and the Baltic states these factors have only a marginal share of the total transport costs.