The EU-ETS Observatory, launched by Ports of the State, has published the first results of its analysis on the evolution of container shipping routes in the EUROMED region, with data collected until September 2025. The report, presented on February 20, 2026, offers a detailed overview of how the combination of the Red Sea crisis, the implementation of the European emissions trading system for maritime transport, and the end of the anti-monopoly exemptions for shipping consortia is reconfiguring container traffic flows in Europe and its surroundings.
Spanish ports, which in 2024 led with a 22% share of the EUROMED Gateway in TEU-mile, have dropped to 15% during the period October 2024 – September 2025, representing a decline of seven percentage points. In relative terms, this figure corresponds to a loss of almost a third (31.8%) of the market share they held, as it is important not to confuse percentage points of decline —the absolute difference between 22% and 15%— with the percentage of relative loss, which measures how much the share has been reduced compared to the starting level. Morocco (15%) now equals Spain, and the United Kingdom (14%) is just one point behind.
The trend of the Spanish share by country in the EUROMED Gateway indicator reveals an upward cycle between 2022 and 2024 followed by a sharp decline. Spain started in 2022 with a 16%, tied with Morocco and above the Netherlands (15%), Greece (8%), Belgium (7%), France (7%), the United Kingdom (7%) and Egypt (6%). In 2023, Spain rose to 19%, followed by Morocco (16%), the Netherlands (14%), Greece (8%), Egypt (6%), the United Kingdom (6%), Belgium (6%), Germany (5%), France (5%) and Portugal (5%). In 2024, Spain reached its peak with 22%, followed by Morocco (18%), the Netherlands (13%), the United Kingdom (10%), Egypt (7%), France (7%), Belgium (6%), Portugal (4%), Greece (3%), Germany (3%), Israel (2%) and Turkey (2%). However, in the data corresponding to the period October 2024 – September 2025, Spain drops to 15%, tied with Morocco (15%), with the United Kingdom at 14%, the Netherlands at 12%, Egypt and France at 8%, Belgium at 7%, Germany at 4%, Portugal, Italy, Israel, and Turkey at 3%, Greece at 2% and Malta at 1%. The observatory includes the individualized evolution of the kTEU-mile indicator for the four main Spanish ports in transoceanic routes —Valencia, Algeciras, Las Palmas, and Barcelona— with differentiated trajectories between 2022 and the third quarter of 2025.
Gerardo Landaluce, president of the Port Authority of Algeciras Bay (APBA) and vice president of ESPO (European Sea Ports Organisation), has stated that the conclusions of the observatory "are clear and confirm what we have been warning about from the port authority for more than four years: the evident danger of traffic diversion and, more seriously, the diversion of investments to third countries outside the European Union." Landaluce has pointed out that "the European maritime sector, as a whole, and especially the European ports of the Mediterranean, have been demanding a review of the current ETS, what is called the carbon emissions market, because it penalizes the competitiveness of our ports and this translates into a loss of activity in our terminals and, therefore, of jobs."
The president of the APBA has emphasized the issue of investments, directly referring to the report's data: "The most concerning thing is also the diversion of investments, and there are the data: more than seven billion four hundred million euros in new projects in third countries, competing with our European ports, which represent an increase in their capacity by sixty percent at the cost of European projects." As Vice President of ESPO, Landaluce has highlighted that "from ESPO we share the same concern: the need to reform the current functioning of the maritime ETS to avoid unwanted effects on the competitiveness of the European port system."
Landaluce has reminded that 2026 is the year in which a balance must be made of the practical application of the European directive and that there is "an opportunity to introduce improvements in the framework of the scheduled review." From the perspective of port management, he specified that "our main concern lies in the alteration of the rules of the game for competition," and added that, although certain traffics can be displaced between European ports staying within the internal market, "what is not recoverable is the investment made in a port, which remains for fifty years or more, and that does not return and, on the contrary, competes with our ports."
The Vice President of ESPO has emphasized that "the current geopolitical and geoeconomic context is substantially different from that existing when the maritime ETS was designed five years ago" and that "the growing global competition, tensions in supply chains, and the need to strengthen European resilience demand a vision adapted to the present reality." Therefore, he considered it "essential to adjust the maritime ETS to ensure that European climate goals are met without harming the structural competitiveness of European ports," since "Europe needs strong, connected, and competitive ports as pillars of its strategic autonomy and industrial policy."
What is the EU-ETS Observatory and how does it measure the impact on maritime routes? The observatory is expected to last three years and has been developed by a consortium formed by three companies with experience in the maritime sector: SBC (Shipping Business Consultants), Cenit —innovation unit of CIMNE— and Nextport. The tool provides two differentiated services. On one hand, a monitoring service that tracks the evolution of routes and emissions based on data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). On the other hand, a prediction service that makes projections about the risk of changes in routes, based on statistical transport models. AIS data allows for precise description of the structure and evolution of maritime routes, and from this information, emissions estimates are obtained that are calibrated with MRV-EMSA emissions data.
Among the parameters that the observatory monitors are the number of port calls, the number of vessel calls on transoceanic routes (deep-sea), the distances sailed, the ship capacities, the equivalent CO₂ emissions, the TEU-mile indicator, and the market share in TEU-mile. This last indicator is central to the analysis. The TEU-mile of a vessel is calculated by multiplying its TEU capacity by the sum of the distance to the port of origin and the distance to the port of destination.
The TEU-mile of a port is the sum of the TEU-miles of all vessels that call at it, and the TEU-mile share (share_TEU-mile) represents the percentage of the total TEU-mile of the EUROMED region attributed to each port. The observatory states that this indicator has several advantages: it has a strong correlation with the CO₂ emissions reported by vessels (with R² coefficients between 0.84 and 0.93 depending on the type of vessel —0.89 for feeder vessels, 0.93 for Post Panamax, 0.91 for New Panamax, and 0.84 for ULCV—), allows for identifying changes in port connectivity, offers rapid calculation capability and automated data exploration, and is robust enough to detect changes in traffic balance between the EU and its neighboring countries even in situations of structural change such as those generated by the Red Sea crisis.
The geographical scope of the study distinguishes between EEA ports (located in EU member states), EEA+ ports (located in neighboring countries within a radius of 300 nautical miles), the EUROMED region (which includes both groups), and EUROMED Gateway calls, which are those made at EUROMED ports by vessels operating on transoceanic routes.
The report identifies three factors that simultaneously may have influenced the reconfiguration of container maritime routes. The first is the end of the CBER (Consortia Block Exemption Regulation). On April 25, 2024, the European Commission ceased to renew this regulation, which allowed shipping companies to establish cooperation agreements exempt from antitrust rules applicable in the EU under certain conditions. The disappearance of this exemption has altered the conditions under which shipping companies organize their joint services.
The second factor is the crisis of the Red Sea. At the end of 2023, in response to attacks on maritime traffic in this area, shipping companies abandoned the use of the Suez Canal and diverted their services to the route via the Cape of Good Hope, resulting in a significant increase in sailed distances and, consequently, in operational costs and emissions.
The third factor is the entry into force of the EU-ETS for maritime transport. Since January 1, 2024, merchant vessels with a gross tonnage of 5,000 GT or more are included in the scope of the European emissions trading system. The observatory estimates that for large container ships operating on transoceanic routes, the application of this regulation increases navigation costs by around 28%. The report provides a concrete example: a container ship of 20,000 TEUs sailing between Singapore and Rotterdam via the Suez Canal faces fuel costs of approximately 1.1 million euros, plus 335,000 euros resulting from the application of the EU-ETS. If that same voyage is made via the Cape of Good Hope, fuel costs rise to 1.6 million euros, with an additional charge of 476,000 euros for the EU-ETS.
The report includes a scatterplot comparing the percentage variation in TEUs with the percentage variation in miles for the main EEA and EEA+ ports (period October 2024 – September 2025 compared to 2023). This analysis allows for the identification of two differentiated groups. In the upper right quadrant, North Sea ports —Southampton, London, and Felixstowe— show positive growth in both TEU capacity and sailed miles. In the lower left quadrant, eastern Mediterranean ports like Piraeus and Marsaxlokk register declines in both variables, while Port Said exhibits singular behavior with a drop in TEUs but a strong increase in miles. Ports such as Algeciras, Sines, Rotterdam, and Le Havre show moderate declines in TEUs with variations in miles close to zero. Tanger Med, Valencia, Bremerhaven, Hamburg, and Las Palmas fall in the zone of positive growth in TEUs, with Las Palmas and Ashdod among those growing the most in this variable.
North Sea and eastern Mediterranean ports, epicenters of traffic transfer The North Sea case study constitutes one of the most detailed blocks of the report. The analysis of the total number of container vessel calls at UK ports and EU northern European ports shows no significant changes since 2022 when all routes are considered. However, when the focus is exclusively on vessel calls on transoceanic routes (EUROMED Gateway), British ports show sustained growth from the end of 2023 to the second quarter of 2025. This finding highlights the importance of focusing the analysis on the entry and exit routes of the EUROMED region, as aggregated data from all routes can mask relevant changes in long-distance connectivity.
The evolution of the kTEU-mile indicator in the North Sea shows a strong increase at the end of 2023 in response to the Red Sea crisis. From that point on, sustained growth is observed with no signs of slowing down in the UK, while in the northern EU community ports the growth is slower and tends to flatten towards the end of the period. Taking the first quarter of 2023 as a reference, the percentage growth of the TEU-mile indicator in British ports reaches approximately 300% in the third quarter of 2025, compared to a growth close to 100% in northern EU community ports.
The evolution of market share in kTEU-mile depicts an unmistakable transfer in the North Sea region: the UK rises from 17.5% to 32.1%, an increase of approximately 15 percentage points. That increase corresponds almost symmetrically with the combined decline of the Netherlands (from 35.3% to 24.9%, a loss of 10.4 points) and Germany (from 15% to 9.1%, a loss of 5.9 points). Belgium drops from 18.4% to 16.3%, while France rises from 10.7% to 14.4%. According to the report, the UK already surpasses northern EU countries both in total ship capacity calling at its ports and in nautical miles sailed by the vessels that arrive or depart from them.
The report includes route maps illustrating how this change has occurred. In 2023, stops in northern Europe on the Asia-North Europe route were organized with Rotterdam as the main entry and exit port, with intermediate stops in Hamburg and Felixstowe. In 2025, two new patterns are detected: in some cases, the route maintains the same stops at northern European ports but the entry is made through Rotterdam and the exit through Felixstowe; in other cases, the routes have been reconfigured so that both the entry and exit from the region occur through British ports, with Felixstowe as the gateway port and Bremerhaven and Gdansk as intermediate stops.
The second case study addresses the eastern Mediterranean, where the reconfiguration has been even more pronounced. When analyzing all routes, the number of stops remains stable in Greece and shows a slow but steady increase in Egypt and Turkey. However, when filtering exclusively for stops on transoceanic routes, a sharp decline is observed in Greece and Egypt at the end of 2023. The subsequent evolution of both countries differs radically: Egypt experiences sustained recovery to levels close to those of the first quarter of 2022, while Greece's transoceanic stops do not recover. In Turkey, the canal closure causes a rapid increase in stops on long-distance routes, which stabilizes in the third quarter of 2024.
The kTEU-mile indicator confirms these trends. In Greece, it reacts to the Red Sea crisis with a pronounced drop followed by a gradual and sustained decline. In Egypt and Turkey, it responds with sudden increases. Taking the first quarter of 2023 as a reference, growth in the indicator in Turkey reaches approximately 200% and in Egypt nearly 150%, while Greece registers negative values. The report notes a constant and sustained decline in the share of TEU-mile from EU countries in the eastern Mediterranean compared to that of their neighbors, primarily Egypt, Turkey, and Israel. Greece has fallen from concentrating 41% of the TEU-mile share in the area to only 14%, while Egypt has climbed from 35% to 52%. Turkey has gone from 10% to 15% and Israel from 11% to 14%. According to the report, Greece is the country that loses the most connectivity, both in total ship capacity calling at its ports and in nautical miles sailed.
The report documents how the structure of routes in the eastern Mediterranean has transformed in three phases. In 2023, Piraeus operated as the hub port of the area. In 2024, amidst the Red Sea crisis, service via the Cape of Good Hope was maintained. In 2025, Port Said has become the new hub of the eastern Mediterranean. The observatory also identifies a new maritime service in the Mediterranean operated with 14 Panamax vessels that uses the port of Damietta as the regional gateway, with a stop in Piraeus as an intermediate port on its Mediterranean route, illustrating the degradation of the Greek port's role from hub to secondary scale.
The report dedicates a section to investments in container terminals at ports in neighboring countries of the EU. Since 2021, significant investments have been executed or planned across various categories. In new ports, Morocco is building Nador West Med and Dakhla Atlantique. In new terminals, Egypt is developing Abu Qir, Damietta, and Alexandria; Turkey is expanding Mersin; and the UK is launching London Gateway. In improvements to existing facilities —deepening, extending berths and storage areas, and installing new handling equipment— are Port Said (Egypt), Ashdod (Israel), Aliaga (Turkey), and Felixstowe and Southampton (UK). The total volume of investments executed or planned in Morocco, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, and the United Kingdom during the period 2021-2029 amounts to 7.428 billion euros. The combined operational capacity of these ports before 2024 was estimated at 32.35 million TEUs annually, a figure expected to reach 51.5 million TEUs in 2029, an increase of 60%.
The observatory announces as next steps the analysis of ro-ro services, the full development of the route choice model, the proposal of measures, the simulation of future scenarios with new terminals in operation, the analysis of other Mediterranean regions (central and western), the monitoring of the evolution of the situation in 2026 with the reopening of the Suez Canal, and the development of new statistical analyses at the route structure level.