The Port of Las Palmas faces an international chessboard where the rules of the game do not seem to be the same for all players. In statements made to Cope Las Palmas, the president of the Canary Federation of Port Enterprises (Fedeport), José Juan Socas, defended the competitiveness of the Gran Canaria port this Thursday, while issuing a severe warning: the strength of the new port in Dakhla, managed by Morocco in Western Sahara, occurs in a scenario of artificial competitive advantage or, in his own words, ‘with marked cards.’
The epicenter of this distortion lies in Brussels’ climate policy. Socas has identified the European Union’s emissions trading system, known as ETS rates, as the main burden for Canary Islands ports. While Las Palmas must internalize these environmental costs in its tariffs, non-EU ports like Dakhla operate free of this tax burden. For the port business leader, this differential creates an ‘unfair competition’ that specifically punishes ultraperipheral regions, which see their geographic advantage diluted under the weight of European green bureaucracy.
To illustrate the magnitude of the risk, the president of Fedeport has referred to the data from the United Kingdom following its exit from the EU. As he explained on Cope, British port traffic has experienced growth of up to 70 or 80 percent at the expense of historic hubs like Rotterdam or Antwerp, simply by being outside the European regulatory straitjacket. Socas has not hidden his displeasure with the current diplomatic drift, lamenting that Spain has lost ‘a great deal of strength’ in the offices of Brussels to defend the particularities of its strategic ports.
Despite this horizon of regulatory inequality, the sector shows a certain solidity thanks to diversification. Socas has emphasized that the Port of Las Palmas remains firmly positioned in the ‘top 4’ of the entire Spanish port system, driven by a ‘very important’ commitment to two key segments: bunkering (fuel supply) and the cruise market. This operational strength allows the Gran Canaria capital to compete above what its population weight would dictate, solidifying its status as a top-tier logistics platform in the Central Atlantic.
However, the reality of operational costs is beginning to impact the profit margins. The president of Fedeport has confirmed that the increase in fuel prices is already ‘considerable’ for port service companies, forcing them to modify budget allocations on the fly to cover consumption that exceeds all initial forecasts. Despite concerns about how global instability may hinder investment or tourism, Socas wanted to send a message of calm regarding the supply of basic goods, calling the fear of shortages ‘outrageous,’ reminding that port logistics always finds new routes when one door closes.
