| The shipping alliance is the joint operation trend of enterprises in the international shipping market.In the context that the shipping market is still not optimistic in the next few years,the shipping alliance will become the main way of integration of the shipping industry.The competition among the alliances will replace the single enterprise and become the new normal of the industry.However,China's existing shipping laws and regulations have not yet formed a systematic and effective system to control the competition order of the international shipping industry.According to the current legal norms,the problems about whether the shipping alliance agreement can get antitrust exemption and how to obtain antitrust exemption or how to regulate the alliance agreement without antitrust exemption need to be solved urgently.Therefore,under the general trend of shipping alliance,the construction of shipping alliance antitrust exemption system in line with the status of China's shipping economy which can provide sufficient legal basis for the antitrust exemption practice of shipping alliances has important research significance.The main content of this paper is divided into five chapters:The first chapter is an overview of the shipping alliance antitrust exemption system The first section introduees the meaning of the antitrust exemption system,including the meaning of the exemption system and the significance of the exemption of the antitrust law.The second section is about the shipping alliance,introducing the shipping alliance from three aspects:definition,competition status and development trend.The second chapter analyzes the problems of China's legal regulation of shipping alliances and current legislation.The Antitrust Law,International Maritime Regulations and its Implementation Rules have preliminarily established general international shipping competition rules,but the definition of the concept is ambiguous and the regulations are not perfect enough to provide a clear basis for antitrust exemptions for shipping alliances in practice.The applicable exclusions in the Antitrust Law lack specific operational standards applicable to the shipping industry and the applicable relationship between the International Maritime Regulations and the Antitrust Law in regulating the competition order in the maritime market is not yet clear.The third chapter explains the necessity of building the antitrust exemption system of shipping alliance in China from three aspects.The first part is to analyze the particularity of the shipping industry,and explain the basis of the shipping alliance's antitrust exemption from the perspective of the small price elasticity of supply and demand of liner shipping and the internationalization and strategic perspective of shipping competition.The second part is to comprehensively consider the positive and negative impacts of the shipping alliance antitrust exemption system on the development of China's international shipping industry,and conclude that the overall benefits of the shipping alliance are greater than the disadvantages.The third part is to analyze the international development trend of shipping alliance regulation,mainly introducing the regulatory path of EU law and US shipping law.Although the two have different regulatory paths to the shipping alliance agreement,they continue to give shipping alliance antitrust exemption.These two regulatory paths also provide references for China to build a shipping alliance antitrust exemption system.The fourth chapter and the fifth chapter are the study on how to construct the shipping alliance antitrust exemption system.The fourth chapter is to construct the substantial system of the shipping alliance antitrust exemption.The first part is to analyze the applicable subject of exemption from the form of cooperation,operational procedures and cost sharing,through the definition of the shipping alliance agreement,to adopt different supervision methods for the loose shipping alliance and the compact shipping alliance.The second part is to refine the applicable conditions of the exemption from the market share,the prohibition behavior and the independent action right.The third part is to define the regulatory subject of the shipping alliance.The fifth chapter is to construct the procedural system of the shipping alliance antitrust exemption,adopting the combination of pre-examination and post-regulation.The pre-examination procedures include improving the agreement filing system,strengthening the applicant's information disclosure obligations,and formulating antitrust guidelines as the legal basis for the alliance's self-assessment.Post-regulatory procedures include the supervision of information disclosure obligations,the supervision of the implementation of the reporting agreement,the supervision of the operation of the alliance,and the penalties and legal responsibilities for acts that hinder the maritime competition.In addition,the establishment of an information exchange feedback mechanism and a reasonable signing of multilateral agreements can lay the foundation for the construction of an international antitrust law enforcement coordination mechanism. |
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