The Consultative Shipping Group (CSG), an informal forum established in the 1960s and comprising the maritime authorities of Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and the UK, published a joint statement on Tuesday declaring the group’s first public intervention in more than six decades. The statement, titled “In Defence of Free Shipping,” warned that the accumulation of wars, chokepoint disruption, shadow fleets and discriminatory trade measures amounts to a structural change in shipping’s operating environment rather than a series of isolated shocks. The CSG’s members collectively represent more than a fifth of global trade by tonnage, and the group noted that more than 80 percent of world trade moves by sea, meaning any erosion of the rules governing safe passage carries consequences far beyond the shipping industry itself.
The warning specifically cited the rapid growth of an unregulated “shadow fleet” of tankers operating outside standard insurance, safety and transparency mechanisms, often used to circumvent sanctions on Russian and Iranian oil exports, as creating a parallel system that undermines trust across the industry. The group also pointed to escalating risks at critical chokepoints, including the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has been negotiating a deal with Oman to manage shipping traffic that shipowners fear could set a precedent for tolls or restricted access at other maritime bottlenecks. Rather than calling for new regulations, the CSG urged member states and the wider international community to enforce existing rules, particularly those set by the International Maritime Organization, more consistently across jurisdictions, warning that uneven application distorts markets and weakens confidence in shipping as the backbone of global trade.
Source: The Maritime Executive — https://maritime-executive.com/article/shipping-nations-call-for-cooperation-warning-of-emerging-two-tier-system
Tags: Consultative Shipping Group, Shadow Fleet, Strait of Hormuz, Maritime Trade
