The Greek Minister of Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy Ioannis Plakiotakis referred to the main axes of the national maritime policy regarding shipping during his speech as a guest of the Piraeus Maritime Club, yesterday.
Mr. Plakiotakis emphasized the strengthening of the national ship registry, on the digitization of the basic functions of the Ministry concerning its relationship with citizens, seafarers and the shipping industry, on the creation of a modern holistic maritime education, on the reformation and stability of institutional operating framework of shipping, but also to the challenges of the future.
In particular, Mr. Plakiotakis, emphasized the ontribution of the Greek shipping to the national economy of the country, pointing out that the shipping foreign exchange that flowed into Greece from the beginning of 2022 until October amounted to 19.48 billion euros. He also underlined, among other things, the following:
National Register of Ships
"A constant and fundamental pursuit of the ministry has been and remains the strengthening of the global power of Greek shipping. For this reason at the beginning of 2021 we promoted measures to recover the competitiveness of the national registry. Today, two years after the implementation of the measures, we can talk about a successful intervention, since in the two years 2021-2022 a steady increase in the registration of seagoing vessels in the Greek registry was observed, corresponding to an increase of 23.8% for the year 2021 and 42,8 % for the year 2022, compared to the previous year 2020.In the same period, Greek ship management reached a historic high of 5,114 units, with Piraeus now being one of the largest, if not the largest ship management center in the world."
Digital Transformation
"The Ministry is one of the first to proceed with the full digitization of shipping records, with an emphasis on company registers, registers and seafarer's registers, moving to the implementation of systemic interventions of digitally manageable information, so that with the development of applications and fully computerized processes they facilitate the Greek flag.In collaboration with the Information Society SA, we announced a tender of almost 5 million euros with the resources of the Recovery Fund for the digitization of the first files, and a new tender of 10 million euros follows through ESPA 21-27 for the digitization of other critical registers as well, so that we can now we are talking about interoperability and not to inconvenience citizens and businesses in the relationship with the state. In a few days, together with the Minister of Digital Governance, we will present an important innovation in the field of simplification of procedures, with the digitization of the process of issuing and reissuing the maritime brochure. With the "seafarer e-box" project, we are creating an almost exclusively digital process of seafarer contact with the Port Authorities, limiting the physical presence of the seafarer to the absolute necessary extent and ushering in a new era in the Digital seafarer Booklet, putting an end to the suffering of thousands seafarers and freeing up human resources in Port Authorities. Also, the digital application for issuing Seamanship Certificates (ANI) will soon be put into operation, which will put an end to the queues and the suffering of seafarers. With a few clicks, they will be able to initiate and complete the application and track the progress of their application until the issuance of the Certificate of Seaworthiness."
Naval Education
"The digital transformation of maritime education is progressing through the 11 interventions. With the valuable cooperation of the Eugenides Foundation, the public maritime education is being upgraded organizationally and gaps of years in the student-educator-administration-shipowners relationship are covered. We promote an integrated Information System of modern and asynchronous education that facilitates both the student and the teacher in the knowledge process. We created the Register of Maritime Education Instructors and digitized the recruitment process for teachers, while with the Eugenides Foundation we are creating a special platform for the training of instructors, as was also a requirement from the evaluations of the Greek maritime education system. The next step is the preparation of a draft law for a real and substantial upgrade of maritime education, which will aim for its holistic management and treatment from the High School to the Merchant Marine Academies and the further training centers for seafarers, the increase in the number of admissions to the Academies, the reinforcement and flexibility in the study programs and adaptation to the new educational data of the maritime profession".
Modernization and stability of the institutional framework
"We proceeded with the necessary actions to modernize the institutional framework of shipping. The law-making committee for reforming the Code of Private Maritime Law has already completed its work, after 64 years, i.e. in 1958 when the Code came into force.
The draft of the new Code has been submitted to public consultation and within the next few days it is expected to be submitted to Parliament for a vote. At the same time, we proceeded with the Codification of the scattered and fragmented provisions for maritime cabotage and passenger rights.Finally, in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance, we promoted measures to adapt the Greek shipping aid regime to EU rules on competition. In this context, in November 2022, a new joint commitment of the Greek government was concluded with the shipping community, which is expected to generate revenues of 60 million euros per year to the national budget".
Photo (L-R): Nikos Doukas (Editor nafsgreen.gr) - Yiannis Plakiotakis (Greek Minister of Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy) - George Alexandratos (Vice President, Hellenic Chamber of Shipping, President, Piraeus Marine Club)