Recommendation 451
(1966)
- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- Assembly debates on 25th and 26th January 1966 (19th, 20th and 21st Sittings) (seeDoc. 1999, report of the Economic Committee). Text adopted by the Assembly on 26th January 1966 (21st Sitting).
The Assembly,
1. Noting with concern that, while many other forms of protection have been reduced, flag discrimination has become more wide-spread, and that flag discrimination today is practised by more than forty countries ;
2. Convinced that flag discrimination leads to increases both in the cost of sea transportation and in the time needed to get goods moved by sea from one port to another, whether from the standpoint of transport users in the discriminating countries or from the standpoint of other transport users ;
3. Welcoming the proposal of a change in U.S. maritime policy made by the American Interagency Maritime Task Force in its report of 7th October 1965 suggesting an elimination of cargo preferences and other indirect forms of subsidies ;
4. Desirous of assisting less developed countries over their shipping problems in the framework of UNCTAD, and persuaded that there is the widest scope for so doing by methods not involving flag discrimination ;
5. Noting that the 1963 London Ministerial Conference on Shipping agreed that intensified European efforts to halt flag discrimination were called for, and recommended that the nations concerned should study the possibility of providing themselves with appropriate legal powers to strengthen their common position when dealing with countries pursuing discriminatory shipping practices,
6. Recommends to the Committee of Ministers :
that member countries of the Council of Europe should further develop their existing consultation in the Maritime Transport Committee of OECD with a view to more effectively resisting flag discrimination irrespective of where it is practised ;
that those member countries of the Council of Europe which do not already dispose of legislation enabling them to defend themselves against discriminatory shipping practices should implement the Recommendation of the London Ministerial Shipping Conference of 1963.
