QUALITY REGISTERS - A FUTURE NETWORK WITH A TOUCH OF CLASS?

摘要

This article discusses the idea of establishing a network of quality registers that would aim to reduce and eventually eliminate substandard shipping on a global scale. Although numerous other approaches with the same goal have already been adopted in practice and have achieved reasonable success, safety in shipping is still overlooked or compromised at times. This is mainly due to the existence of those ship registers, particularly open registries, that do not impose safety requirements on the vessels registered. The lack of regulation is what attracts shipowners because it offers them a financial advantage, but at the ethical expense of sacrificing safety on board. A network of quality registers would connect all the registers that follow and maintain criteria of high shipping standards in an effort to achieve a shift in the attitudes of both flag states and shipowners whereby quality in shipping will come to take priority over financial incentives. Implementation and regulation of such a network are tasks that would appear to be best fulfilled by classification societies. This is due to the sophisticated infrastructure that those societies have as well as the role they already perform. Indeed, the accomplishments of class societies render the phenomenon of a quality register network a viable one. Although bringing this idea to life in practice is likely to meet some difficulties, the potential of its future impact is promising.