Spain’s largest container port has fallen further behind its Moroccan competitors as European Union carbon pricing reaches full force and a rival terminal built with European development money prepares to open 50km from Melilla.
The Bay of Algeciras port authority recorded 4.73 million containers in 2025, measured in twenty-foot equivalent units, a rise of 0.5 per cent. Tanger Med, 14km across the Strait of Gibraltar, handled 11.1 million, up 8.4 per cent.
Shipping entered the EU emissions trading system on January 1, 2024. Companies surrendered allowances for 40 per cent of their verified emissions in 2024 and 70 per cent in 2025, and from this year they must cover the full amount.
The scheme applies to vessels of 5,000 gross tonnage and above, covering all emissions on voyages between EU ports and half of those to or from third countries.
The European Commission has tried to close the most obvious escape route. An implementing regulation adopted on October 26, 2023 designated Tanger Med and East Port Said as neighbouring container transhipment ports, so a stop at either does not count as a port of call.
Nador West Med is not on that list. On July 17, 2026, as part of its revision of the carbon market, the Commission proposed cutting the threshold for inclusion from 65 per cent of a port’s container traffic to 50 per cent and reviewing the list annually rather than every two years.
The Moroccan port lies in the Bay of Betoya, some 30km west of the city of Nador. Equipment and water minister Nizar Baraka told Reuters in December 2025 that it would open in the second half of this year, with an initial capacity of 3 million containers.
Its construction has drawn on European lending. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development signed a €200 million facility in 2015, added €100 million in 2022 and approved a further €110 million in 2025 for the adjoining industrial zone, financing that a University of Navarra paper put at €310 million in total.
The bank is not an EU institution, though the European Union and the European Investment Bank sit among its shareholders. Melilla city government has complained that Brussels obstructs its own harbour while paying for the Moroccan one.
The port was also meant to host Morocco’s first liquefied natural gas terminal, loosening its reliance on Spanish regasification plants. Rabat suspended the tender for the floating unit in February 2026, leaving the kingdom dependent on gas shipped south through the reversed Maghreb-Europe pipeline.
Relations between Madrid and Rabat have been strained since tens of thousands of people crossed into Ceuta on July 30, a crisis that led Italy and Spain to reimpose checks on their internal border.