It is back to the drawing board for the European Commission on the Ports Services Directive, which this week was defeated comprehensively by the European Parliament.
A surprising coalition of socialists, liberals and conservatives rejected the bill. This is the second one to have fallen in two years because it undermined existing regulations or paid insufficient attention to varying structures in the ownership of port facilities.
Violent demonstrations by dockers' unions this week in Strasbourg are a reminder that deregulation affecting working conditions is no longer assured of a passive reception.
This legislation comes after most other forms of transport, including by air, road, and rail, have been liberalised in the European Union, opening them up to much greater competition and creating major economies of scale and price. Ports are vital conduits of trade within the EU, accounting for up to 90 per cent of its external commerce. They are substantially more efficient than those in Asia or the United States. This legislation would have provided that ports with a turnover greater than 1.5 million tonnes or half a million passengers per annum would have to put all services out to tender, open cargo handling to competition and on many routes allow ship crews to handle loading and unloading, not full-time dock workers.
This was described by one French union organiser as "unbridled social dumping, out and out free market ideology. They take who they want, do with them what they want, with no rules." Dockers from the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Greece and France concurred, since their agreements and public ownership would be undermined by passage of the legislation. In Britain privatisation and deregulation have created a completely different structure, but still with local monopoly, in which ports compete against one another rather than within them. Thus, the legislation was opposed by British conservative MEPs as an unacceptable and inappropriate intrusion.
Irish MEPs also voted against, although many of them support the principle of liberalisation so long as the various stakeholders of existing services go along with it - as does the Government. They will all be more aware of the conflicting interests and sensitivities involved following the Irish Ferries dispute and the looming row over the Services Directive, which the Commission and the Austrian EU presidency are pledged to pursue over the next five months.
The failed ports directive can be a lesson for all concerned about the need for greater transparency and the likelihood that future EU directives impinging on working conditions will be much more contested.