The European Commission (EC) issued the final report on The Application of Competition Rules to Liner Shipping . The report concludes that repealing the EU block exemption for liner shipping would lead to moderate price declines and would have a positive impact on service reliability. The report does recommend, though, that the liner companies be allowed to engage in limited information exchange, but not as extensive as the liner companies have proposed. According to the EC Press Release accompanying the report, the review process will culminate with a Commission proposal to the EU’s Council of Ministers to repeal the Block Exemption Regulation by the end of the year.