The presentation given by Captain Christian Rørbeck of Maersk Line at a European Union e-Maritime conference more than a year ago seems almost to have entered folklore.
Where is the majority of a captain’s time spent, he asked – on the bridge doing what he was actually trained to do, or buried under tonnes of paperwork? No prizes for guessing the answer.
He described a voyage from China to Northern Europe, calling Zeebrugge, Gdansk, Aarhus, Gothenburg, Bremerhaven, Rotterdam. These ports are all within the EU and within the Schengen Agreement. “But as a maritime captain, to call these ports we have to submit 26 crew/passenger lists, 14 varieties of declarations, six stores lists, two port of call lists, various legal forms … a total of 80 documents, and you have something like 42 of them in advance before you actually call. If I had taken the same trip in a car, I would most likely not have shown my passport to anyone.”
His account seemed more than enough to justify the EU’s determination to facilitate and simplify maritime transport regulations and processes, in order to create a level playing field between all transport modes. Not many would argue with the virtues of cutting down on form-filling and easing customs formalities in order to encourage more freight on to water.
When the EC set out its ‘Blue Belt’ plans (subtitled ‘a Single Transport Area for Shipping’) in 2013, vice president Siim Kallas, responsible for transport, said: “Europe is faced with major challenges in terms of rising congestion and pollution. We need shortsea shipping to fulfil its potential and provide a low cost, environmentally friendly transport solution, taking more goods off lorries and off our congested roads. We are proposing innovative tools to cut red tape and help make the shipping sector a more attractive alternative for customers looking to move goods around the EU.”
Enhanced offering
So what happens next? The Blue Belt proposals includes an enhanced RSS (regular shipping service), which is a customs facilitation scheme for vessels calling on a regular basis in EU ports only, carrying mainly EU goods.
A harmonised electronic manifest is also on the wish list and a deadline for this e-manifest was actually set for June this year – but early proposals drew criticism from a number of industry bodies, and it’s unclear how quickly this will now progress.
But the National Single Window deadline of June 1, 2015 remains in place and is fast approaching – and there is much debate about whether all member states will be able to achieve what’s required in the timeframe.
The UN defines a Single Window as a system that allows all participants in foreign trade to file all required information simultaneously, in one place, in standard form and to one agency. If the information is electronic, then it should only be submitted once.
“Single Window is indeed important but in our opinion it is not achievable by June 2015,” says Gregor Veselko, chief executive of Port-Line, the port community services arm of Slovenian-based Actual Group. “Our studies show many port authorities are still far away from such IT orientation and June 2015 is practically round the corner. And such IT implementations, in order to be successful, require thorough business analysis and careful implementation.”
Lack of understanding
Port community systems (PCSs) already handle significant parts of what a Single Window would do, particularly the business and administration flows. However, the European Port Community Systems Association (EPCSA) has voiced its concerns that European policymakers do not really understand what PCSs do, and therefore there is a danger of Europe duplicating effort.
“We have seen a lot of directives, initiatives and regulations coming out in the transport and customs area and we need to remember: although we need simplification, we need to make sure we don’t re-invent the wheel and throw away what we have already got,” says EPCSA chairman Alan Long, of Felixstowe-based Maritime Cargo Processing (MCP).
Port-Line’s Mr Veselko says: “We could not agree more with the EPCSA concerns. This ‘not completely understanding’ of policymakers has a cascade effect to the single port authorities, which are mostly run by politically appointed managers. Moreover, when it comes to the real world, you can quickly see that in terms of scope, a PCS is a much wider concept than the Single Window one. It requires more links and logistics efforts within the whole supply chain, not only ports.”
Actual, based in Koper, has been through a substantial transition itself in the past few years, from a local IT provider to a global one. Besides Slovenia, it has ongoing projects in Croatia, Montenegro, Greece, Romania, Turkey, Cyprus and Italy, as well as projects with partners in South East Asia, Australia and South America.
Mr Veselko says political instability and privatisation issues are two major causes of slow implementation of the Single Window concept. “The fact is, a PCS introduces transparency, which in many cases could represent a big burden.”
Model mix-up
Discussions at a UN Global Trade Facilitation conference underlined the importance of PCSs in this context. The conference report stated: “The Single Window models vary greatly from one country to another, depending on a country’s readiness and priorities. Models include paperless Customs, Port Community Systems and Single Window systems that link government agencies on the national and regional level.”
Transport and logistics research company Inlecom Systems has launched a guide and check list to enable maritime authorities and trade organisations to fulfil their obligation to deliver ship reporting formalities in electronic format via a Single Window.
This project was part-funded by the EC’s DG Move. “Over the years, trade and transport related authorities have established an extensive range of authority-specific and country-specific regulatory requirements for international trade and transport with little coordination amongst each other, at the national, European or international level,” says Dr Takis Katsoulakos, director of Inlecom. “As a result, traders and transport operators are often faced with a complex set of duplicative and redundant reporting requirements.”
Europe’s drive for a ‘maritime transport space without barriers’ could create a level playing field compared with other modes, and the primary benefits would be environmental, he says. “I think the EU has made progress up to now and the main thrust now is the National Single Window requirement. That is a challenge.”
He says that while PCSs have a very important role, including working very closely with national authorities, he does not believe they can act as National Single Windows in themselves. “What is accepted is the PCS as a main channel of information flow to the Single Window – and there will be other channels for information flow,” he says.
He also suggests that countries with the legacy of very well developed and embedded PSCs could be at a disadvantage compared with countries that have simply developed National Single Window solutions from scratch – a claim that clearly EPCSA members would not agree with.
And ten years from now? “I have no doubt that in ten years, everything will be done electronically and everything will be harmonised.”