Your the one talking down my generation. Your generation is pulling the ladder up after you and blaming the next generation of being lazy, and you want a grown up conversation?
Nobody feel entitled to anything, but it should be reciprocal whether licenses issued by one country is accepted in another. This is provided that the licenses are based on IMO approved courses to STCWâ10 standard of course.
IOW: If US refuse to accept licenses issued by any other country, US licenses should not be recognized by anybody else either. Fair enough??
Unfortunately it appears that many flag states is actually accepting US licenses without reciprocality.
The major flags of convenience are actually administered by private for profit American companies from Offices located in the US. Liberia, Vanuatu, the Marshall Islands, and most other flags of convenience have done little more than lease out their âsoverignityâ to American corporations in exchange for cash.
The G20 countries are probably close to 90% of the World economy and responsible for 90% of World trade. The other 171 countries combined are of little importance in world trade or the World economy.
Itâs pretty much the same story in shipping with the exception of the small countries of Greece and Norway. Greece is a nearly bankrupt failed social welfare state that the EU is keeping barely alive on life support, but it has a large footprint in world shipping. Norway has a seafaring heritage and oil wealth, plus its own flag of convience, which gives Norway an outsized role in World shipping.
No one in their right mind should give a damn about what the flag of convenience countries think. They should just do what they have always done: smile, keep their mouths shut, and collect all the dollars being thrown their way â- for doing absolutely nothing of any value.
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You are telling me something I have been trying to explain here a number of times; many of the largest FOCs are owned and operated from USA and run by Americans.
BTW; Here is ITFâs list of FOC registers:
Note that the largest of them all are listed as an USA dependency and the Norwegian 2nd register (NIS) is not on this list.
And we keep explaining to you that we are already aware of this. This is a forum of mariners and youâre not going to find many U.S. mariners cheerleading for these bullshit FOCâs. They are not run by mariners. They are yet another wrinkle in the quagmire that is the international business sphere that opportunistic business people have chosen to exploit. This happens quite a bit in the U.S. as well as other places in the world.
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Itâs long past time to shutdown this scam flag of convenience nonsense. Ships should be registered where their true owners, managers, and financiers are located, and where the ships trade. That is almost entirely in the G20 countries.
Vanuatu, the Marshall Islands, Liberia, and their kind, have absolutely nothing to offer in shipping. They should not be sitting at the IMO table. Thatâs a farce.
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If a ship is owned by a Bermuda company where a citizen of Cyprus whoâs a resident of UK, (but originally a Norwegian) own controlling shares and financed by banks and hedge funds in New York, managed by a company in Hong Kong and operate in worldwide trade, where would you suggest it belong?
Marshall Islands has the biggest fleet under their flag, so who can tell them they cannot be represented in IMO meetings and committees??
They are still a ward of the US, although they nominally became a sovereign state in 1986 in order to be able to be used as a convenient place to register US owned vessels, since Liberia had become unstable. (Better than to be a resting ground for nuclear weapons, I guess)
Some facts about the Marshall Islands:
Your Norwegian shipowner May have bought himself a second passport in Cyprus, and may be living in the UK, but heâs still a Norwegian. Bermuda is little more than a transparent UK tax scam.
Hong Kong is a special case for a variety of reasons, but since its part of China, Hong Kong should not have a registry separate from China.
Itâs always possible to think up a senario that doesnât fit the normal mold.
Iâd say that your hypothetical ship should be registered at the ownerâs principal place of business, in the UK, or Norway.
One thing for sure, that ship sure as hell has no business being registered in Vanuatu, Liberia, Marshall Islands, Panama, Honduras, Cyprus, Malta, Cook Islands, Antigua, or any other phony flag of convenience.
Nearly all trade and most shipping is conducted by, or to, the G20 countries. Most ships are owned and managed from G20 countries. There should be relatively few ships that are not registered in G20 countries.
There are a great many ships owned and/or managed by companies located in Stamford, Connecticut. Those ships should obviously be US registered. Ships registered in phony flags of convenience, like Liberia, operated by companies located in the US, should be registered in the US. Obviously, Maersk ships should be registered in Denmark. MSC ships should registered in France. COSCO ships should be registered in China, etc. Nothing difficult about determining where most ships should be registered.
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Place of business doesnât mean very much to international shippers.
Seems to me that your discomfort boils down to: business interests have more power than national interests. And it aught to be not-like-that. Is that a fair summary?
Whatâs the solution, then? âshould be this way, should not be that wayâ is only an observation.
Seems to me, that if nations are not strong enough, and businesses are too strong, we need something bigger than both of them to sort it out. Weâve got the IMO: not perfect, but better than nothing.
US participation in licensing reciprocity is one thing, but I donât see how it is connected to flags of convenience. It seems like conflating these two things may be a symptom of some kind of xenophobic foreign=bad knee jerk thing.
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It is actually 19 countries and the EU and aside from China, Germany, Japan and USA none are major ship owning or operating countries.
More realistic to compare with is OECD, which consist of 34 industrialized countries:
PS> The said Shipowner and his many ships are not hypothetical.
BRW: MSC is Swiss, not French:
Is that the same kind of âSwissâ headquarters like Transocean, Carnival, and many others that consist of a small office with a secretary while the majority of their workforce is elsewhere without having to pay local taxes? Seems about right
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I donât like scams designed to help wealthy corporations avoid taxes, safety regs, and environmental regs.
I donât like scams that allow wealthy corporations to replace properly paid national mariners with âthird world villagersâ that are paid almost nothing.
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Iâm sorry but I cannot take landlocked Switzerland , Bolivia, and Mongolia seriously as ship registries.
And no, the canal to Basel does not change the fact that Switzerland is landlocked to seagoing ships.
If a ship cannot moor in the country where it is registered, that country has no business registering it.
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Thereâs no such thing, the IMO doesnât approve courses.
It just goes to show that for the very rich paying taxes is optional. I have seen many shipâs documents purportedly signed at 80 Broad Street, Monrovia, Liberia; when the owner or principal hasnât been within several thousand miles of the place. And I donât blame them.
From what I have read, there isnât even a desk or anyone behind one at that address so signing anything might be difficult. It is nothing but a fiction, just like the Liberian flag itself.
MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co. does not register her ships in Switzerland.
Captain Gianluigi Aponte, founder and chairman of MSC, married a rich Swiss daughter. They made there living at Geneva (in the 60âs, it was dangerous for a rich woman to live in Italy).
Later, with money from his wifeâs parents, they founded Mediterranean ShippingâŚ
The few Swiss flagged ships you may see are all Swiss owned.
During early WW2, when Switzerland had still access to the Mediterranean, by the not yet Nazi occupied part of France, they imported mainly wheat (Switzerland cannot feed the people autonomously) from the Americas. It became indeed very difficult to impossible to charter foreign ships going into the war zone.
Later, the government decided to help Swiss companies to build a Swiss owned fleet, by guaranteeing the bank loans to buy these ships.
Just now, they are undoing these arrangements. Last year one Swiss owner went bankrupt, 13 ships were sold and the government had to pay 250 mio $âŚ
The American Phoenix is registered out of Austin Texas, I always found that funny
80 Broad Street, Monrovia doesnât even exist:
It was created for the convenience of US tax dodgers but became popular with others who wanted a secure place to register their companies and vessels in a country with laws based on US Law and that was acceptable to their financial backers and underwriters.
When Liberia became unstable a new entity under US Law had to be found, thus Marshall Islands were given âindependenceâ to fit the purpose.
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No. MSC actually has itâs corporate Headquartered in Geneva:
But obviously not everything is being operated from there. Their newly acquired APL subsidiary is still operated from Singapore and their Cruise Line from Italy.
MSC Cruises has just launched their first US centered vessel to be homeported in Fort Lauderdale:
If you are looking for a Cruise job you may try here:
https://www.careers.msccruises.com/#/
If you want to know more about MSC, here is a link:
https://www.msc.com/nor/about-us