Now in its third edition, Merchant Shipping Legislation is a useful tool tool for those wishing to refer to the UK and Commonwealth merchant shipping statutes. Organized in subject areas and regularly updated, this complete annotation and commentary on the UK and Commonwealth merchant shipping legislation will be of use to the work of maritime lawyers in the UK and overseas. All the provisions of the various merchant shipping acts are contained in a single easy-to-use volume organized in subject areas. Divided into twenty chapters, the work addresses all the most important areas including: registration; collisions; salvage; pilotage; environmental protection; oil pollution and carriage of goods.
Liner conferences are among the oldest surviving cartels in the world. Created in the 1870s they have existed since on all the world's shipping routes. With the approval or tacit acquiescence of governments everywhere, they fix freight rates, control capacity and share markets. The United Nations Code of Conduct for Liner Conferences (1974) granted them global recognition and prompted the European Community to recommend Member States to join the Convention on the Liner Code (1979) and to grant them the most generous and extraordinary block exemption from EC antitrust rules ever (1986). The European Commission's administration of the block exemption has clarified some of its aspects and, to a certain extent, limited its scope; but until very recently, it has not questioned the appropriateness of the exceptionally lenient treatment of liner shipping cartels in the European Union. After a report by the OECD Secretariat (2002) recommending abolition of antitrust immunity for shipping cartels in member countries, the European Commission launched a review of the block exemption (2003) which has led to its repeal (2006). This book studies first the origins, the early history and the regulation of liner conferences in the world and in the European Community, focusing in particular on the Regulation which granted a block exemption to liner conferences. Then, it examines one by one the four conditions for a block exemption to be granted under EC law, and concludes that none of them is fulfilled by shipping cartels. Finally, it proposes some alternative scenarios and solutions for the adequate enforcement of antitrust law in the maritime sector once the block exemption has been repealed.
