I distinctly remember being at IMLI just one year ago, preparing a legislative drafting project and my dissertation.
'IMLI' stands for International Maritime Law Institute, which is the brainchild of the International Maritime Organisation and is set up to train professionals all over the world in the rule of maritime law. The motto is: Safer Shipping on Cleaner Oceans. (www.imli.org)
The course is a full time one, so I had quite a task to juggle work and study. Luckily, Malta being a maritime hub, one tends to be familiar with certain issues from undergrad school.
The European Commission is in the process of working on its policies concerning EC Maritime Law, and this is not a day too early. Indeed, for many years there has been a debate as to whether the EC should in fact be a full member of the IMO, which is an international organisation, or whether it should continue to hold observer status.
The particularity of EC law is its supremacy over the Member States' national law. Thus, a Member State is not free, in an IMO forum, to vote in favour of anything that has already been legislated upon by the EC. The Community is one entire landmass, making a coordinated approach which, on the other hand, cannot be achieved without supremacy of EC law. The Community institutions provide a forum for debate among the Member States at European level, which can then present a single front via the European Commission in sessions of other international organisations.
Once the EC takes any steps affecting maritime law, the Member States will no longer be able to take any individual contrary votes at international level. This is, for example, particularly problematic in the case of liner conferences. In September 2006, the European Commission issued a regulation to withdraw the block exemption from Articles 81 and 82 of the EC Treaty in favour of liner conferences. The liner industry has, for years and years, operated by means of liner conferences in order, they claim, to maximise efficiencies, time slots, capacity and so on. If these are now liable to be found contrary to the EC Treaty, and therefore liable to be fined heavily, the Regulation could well be set to change the way that liner shipping works. Liner shipping conferences operate worldwide, but the fact that they have a base, branch or simply that they affect anything in, the EU means that the Commission will investigate and - if necessary fine the parties.
We have yet to see what changes the new regulation will bring about. Liner Conferences have strongly protested against this move, but the Commission has been adamant.