Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
Ship arrest and global economics: changes in ship arrest as an indicator of global financial well-being and environmental consequences
Michael Tsimplis *
George Gerassimou **
Ship arrest is an essential component of maritime law and a foundation of ship finance. Its availability depends on the type of claim put forward and the presence of the ship in the port of the state where arrest is sought. In this article the number of ship arrests at the Ship Registry of Piraeus, Greece, from 1993 to 2022 are analysed for the purpose of identifying changes in the number of arrested ships, the period spent under arrest and the causes affecting ship arrest. More than 200 arrest orders per year are issued for Greek and foreign ships. These include arrest for security (AO) and enforcement (EO). The annual number of, and time of, ship arrests shows a significant decline. The largest flag states show comparable times for ship arrests. There is no indication that ships registered in national registers are released faster than ships in open registers. Around 40 per cent of ships arrested for security by one claimant only are released within 30 days. There are, however, several arrests for security and for enforcement which continue for over a year. Changes in the cost of borrowing money and in the earnings of ship can statistically explain two-thirds of the change in the number of arrests (66 per cent of the variance). This suggests that the number of ship arrests depends on the health of the global economy expressed by the availability of funds and the strength of the shipping market; and that changes in the number of ship arrests and the demand of related legal services should change uniformly around the world. Emissions from ships under arrest are wasteful and, in the effort to decarbonise and clean shipping operations further speeding up of the arrest procedure and reducing the instances it is used could provide a small but beneficial environmental contribution.
* Professor of Law, City University of Hong Kong.
** Gerassimou & Partners Law Firm, Greece.
We are grateful to Ms Vivian Papairakli for assisting with the collection of data and Ms Zhang Xiyue for helping with the quality control and processing. We would also like to thank the Port Authority of the Piraeus Port for facilitating the data collection. Many thanks to Professors Nick Gaskell, Virginia Harper Ho, Paul Myburgh and Wai Yee Wan and Dr Sin Chit Martin Lai, who provided comments on earlier versions of the paper. The work in this paper was funded by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region, China Project GRF 9043463, “Improving Hong Kong’s maritime services: a critical assessment and optimisation of admiralty enforcement including ship arrest and limitation of liability procedure”.
Ship Arrest and Global Economics
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