Ethics and respect of competton law :
A professional competence
Members of STM exercise professional competence through their commitment to a constant improvement of their services, while keeping with regulations and international conventions, and respecting their customers, colleagues and subcontractors.
For this reason, STM adopted rules of professional ethics, issued to each of our new members. They deal with diverse and important aspects such as:
- Respect of regulations (notably European competition law)
- Duty of payment
- Enhancing responsibility
- Professional secrecy
- Duty of counseling
- Respect of colleagues
- Ban on any kind of agreement
- Payment of subcontractors
- Non-competition in case of subcontracting
- Commission on freight
- Instructions and informations towards subcontractors
In this spirit, every monthly meeting of the Board is introduced with a reading of the following text:
“STM is a non-profit professional association established in Marseille in 1888, complying withcompetition law. Each of the discussions taking place in board meetings, or in any kind of meeting held by STM, complies with transport legislation (cargo, ship, river, road and railway), but also with logistics legislation, customs legislation, etc.
Nor STM, nor its permanent staff, nor any of its members or administrators will ever have discussions, within internal or external meetings, prone to infringe competition law. In virtue of competition law, discussions about commercial information such as prices, volumes of the market, etc. are strictly forbidden.
In case any discussion of this board relates with the aforementioned elements, the Chairman in charge of the meeting, or any present person, has the duty to immediately suspend the session.”Forwarders’ Syndicate of Marseille-Fos and their surroundings.