The liberalisation of maritime transport and the island regions in EU. Evidence from Greece

The liberalisation of maritime transport constitutes a substantial and vital progress not only in the maritime transport market but also in influencing the development of distant island regions. In the European Union (EU), the establishment of the legal framework and policy regarding the liberalisation is standing from the year of 1992. In Greece, the first attempt to harmonize the inevitable political and state framework was in 2001 (2932/2001 Act). Prevailing factors encumbered the liberalisation planning and implementing, mainly because of the incoherent procedures applied and the partial cover of principal issues regarding impingement of public interests and goods relative to island development. In our paper, we provide strongly support to the argument that the major initiative considering the development of island regions throughout European territory is that European Policy for the liberalisation of maritime transport should be oriented to the distinctive needs of island regions. Moreover, we provide a “road map” for completion of the liberalisation procedures. Hence, we address specific proposals and measures towards the healing of the inadequate regional development

The Need for a New Philosophy of Port Management and Organisation: Effective Responses to Contemporary Challenges

The application of new technologies and the emergence of ‘new’ transport systems prompt significant and irreversible changes on the structure of the port industry. Analysing the characteristics of this transformation, the paper suggests that new forms of port organisation and management are essential. In this vein, the paper emphasises the increasing importance of flexible specialisation of port services production, and argues that the development of intra-port competition, the presence of employment patterns advancing the utilisation of specialised labour, and the application of total quality management, evolve as integral and complementary characteristics of a contemporary competitive port.

The War on Europe's Waterfront - Repertoires of Power in the Port Transport Industry

When the European Commission proposed a Directive On Market Access to Port Services in February 2001, the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) issued a declaration of war on Europe's waterfront. To protect established terms and conditions of employment in the port transport industry, the ITF developed a strategy of internationalization that required dock workers to engage in a new politics of scale wrought by globalization. A new repertoire of collective action - based on more effective union articulation (i.e. stronger interrelationships between the workplace, national and international levels of organization) combined with the activities of new labour networks that connected port workers at the trans-national corporation, port range and pan-European levels - enabled dockers to sink the Directive in the European Parliament in November 2003. The dockers' victory will not be lost on other European unions or indeed other global union federations, although their success will doubtless prove more difficult for other occupational groups to emulate. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2006.