With the Greek shipping community still coming to grips with the tax law passed within two weeks of New Year’s Day, this second package is attracting far wider national interest because it directly impacts the lives of hundreds of thousands of Greeks. It was to have been tabled first half of February, then on 22 February, now by the end of the month.
The first package may have changed a fiscal system in place for nearly 60 years, by imposing a tonnage tax on non-Greek flag ships operated out of Greece, as well as piling higher taxes on shipping service-related companies, it sought to raise funds as the country struggles to meet the demands of its international creditors. Like most things to do with shipping, the average Greek thought “about time”, not understanding the need for the Greek fleet as exclusive crosstraders to be competitive. Shipowners operating ocean-trading tonnage, which makes up 90% of the Greek fleet, could move to offshore locations, bruising the Piraeus maritime cluster and the Eastern Mediterranean’s largest port.
This time round, the legislation is aimed at overhauling the country's domestic sea transportation network, pitting the government and residents living on the islands in direct conflict with seafarers. Prime minister Antonis Samaras has given “clear instructions” to Shipping and Aegean minister, Kostis Mousouroulis to push ahead with reform of coastal shipping and plans to privatise the country's leading ports.
Further, for the first time shipping’s top admin officials are to meet directly with officials visiting Greece in the coming week from the European Commission, European Central Bank and the IMF -- the so-called ‘troika’. The investment law is seen as concrete step to put Greece back on the investors’ radar in the wake of interest expressed by the French, Qatari and Chinese investors in a number of projects now in motion. The government has clashed with seafarers, as it has with most labour groups over planned reforms.
Early February Samaras invoked a civil mobilisation order forcing seafarers back to work ending a six-day walkout which cut off the country’s islanders and left hundreds of tonnes of perishable goods stranded in ports. Though still under this order, seafarers have repeated the walkout and threaten to do so again, to back demands the government repeal a draft law which aims at easing the huge financial burden operators of coastal and inter-island ships face in the wake of the meltdown of the Greek economy, and has resulted in combined losses to ship operators of $1.5bn. Seafarer jobs will be lost
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