European Union foreign ministers met in Brussels on the 19th to formally launch a Red Sea escort operation.

The action plan lasts for one year and can be renewed, CCTV News reported. According to the report, it will still take several weeks from the official launch to the implementation of specific escort missions. Belgium, Italy, Germany, France and other countries plan to send warships to the Red Sea region.

The Red Sea crisis is still unfolding. According to the latest statistics from Clarkson Research, the capacity of ships entering the Gulf of Aden region in terms of gross tons from February 5 to 11 has fallen by 71% compared with the first half of December last year, and the decline is the same as the previous week.

The statistics show that container ship traffic remained very limited during the week (down 89 per cent from the level in the first half of December). Although freight rates have fallen back in recent weeks, they are still two to three times higher than they were before the Red Sea crisis. Container ship rentals continued to rise modestly over the same period and are now 26 per cent above their level in the first half of December, according to Clarkson Research.

Michael Saunders, senior economic adviser at Oxford Economics, said that since mid-November 2023, global sea freight rates have increased by about 200%, with sea freight from Asia to Europe rising by about 300%. "There are some early signs of this impact in business surveys in Europe, with some disruption to production schedules, longer delivery times and higher input prices for manufacturers. We expect these costs, if sustained, to add substantially to some measures of inflation over the next year or so." "He said.

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