| At least some of the persons principally responsible for the formation of the CMI had been involved in the unification efforts of the previous decade. Among these were the Comité's acknowledged founding fathers: Louis Franck, an Antwerp barrister, Charles LeJeune, a Belgian marine underwriter, and Auguste Beernaert, the President of the Belgian Chamber of Deputies who later became Prime Minister. It was Beernaert who had been the moving force behind the diplomatic conferences of the 1880's, and it was Franck who made the impassioned address to the ILA in 1896 that resulted directly in the establishment of the Comité. These three principal founders were joined by figures from the Belgian government, the judiciary and the legal profession, shipowners, average adjusters, and insurance and commercial men, who signed a second circular letter in August 1896. The August letter suggested that, in response to the CMI's letter of the previous month, there should be formed a "Belgian Association for the Unification of Maritime Law". It announced a general assembly to be held in Antwerp in early October of 1896 to approve the Constitution of the Belgian Association; this was done, and the first meeting of the Association was scheduled for the following month. At that meeting, held in Antwerp on 22 November 1896, Auguste Beernaert was elected President, Charles LeJeune Vice-President, and Louis Franck Secretary-General. It cannot be a coincidence that these same persons were elected to exactly the same positions in the first bureau of the CMI and this fact, taken together with the statements made in a speech delivered at the first meeting of the Association by LeJeune, makes clear that the moving spirits were identical in the formation of both the CMI and the Belgian Association.
The Belgian move was quickly followed by organising efforts in other countries. The CMI’s founding fathers as well as persons from other countries who were actively working to organise national maritime law associations came together in Brussels in June of 1897 to formally establish the Comité Maritime International as the parent international organization to carry on the effort to unify the world's maritime laws and to adopt a constitution for the CMI. In attendance were representatives of 8 nations, and this first International Conference of the CMI led directly to the formation of several new National Member Associations (NMAs). Though the Belgian Association celebrated its Centenary in 1996, and the CMI has not convened its Centenary Conference until 1997, it is now clear that the Comité was in actual (if informal) existence for a brief time before any of its constituent NMAs were formed.
The failed diplomatic conferences of the 1880's also laid the foundation for the partnership between the Belgian Government and the Comité that resulted in the famous series of "Brussels Diplomatic Conferences on Maritime Law”. These conferences adopted the many conventions and protocols drafted by the CMI over more than 80 years, and were held between 1910 (Collision and Salvage) and 1979 (Hague-Visby / SDR). The CMI Liverpool Conference of 1905 adopted a resolution – again at the instigation of Auguste Beernaert – requesting the Belgian Government to convene an international conference to examine the Comité’s draft conventions on collision and salvage, and so the first Conférence Diplomatique de Droit Maritime took place in 1910.
At its 1897 Antwerp Conference the CMI adopted a very short and somewhat vague constitution, which is reproduced at the end of this pamphlet. By the London Conference two years later a slightly longer and considerably more sophisticated constitution had emerged, which established the Founding Members as Titulary Members by right, set the limit for Titulary Members at nine per country, set the number of delegates of NMAs at six, and established a “Bureau Permanent” as the interim governing body of the CMI to function between conferences. The constitutionally-mandated norm during the early years of the Comité was to hold an International Conference each year, but these conferences also fulfilled the functions of a general assembly and were not solely devoted to the debate and adoption of drafts and resolutions which have characterised the less-frequent conferences of the second fifty years of the CMI’s existence.
The years from 1899 through 1955 saw little change in either structure or operation. The number of Titulary Members was increased by one per country, the Bureau Permanent functioned in much the same way as the later Executive Council, and the annual contributions of the Titulary Members is shown in 1947 as being £1.1.0 (one Guinea) or 150 Belgian francs. Then as now, the constitution provided that the contributions of the NMAs would give the Comité its primary support, but it was without detail as to the apportionment of contributions.
The 1955 Madrid Conference adopted a constitution that began the transition to the familiar present structure of the Comité. The Bureau Permanent was expanded to include “one or more Vice-Presidents”, “one or more Secretaries-General and Secretaries” and “a Secretary for Administration”, as well as the President, Treasurer, and one delegate from each NMA. An Administrative Council was added, consisting of the President, the Secretaries-General and Secretaries, the Treasurer and the Secretary for Administration; the Administrative Council was given most of the functions originally assigned to the Bureau Permanent. The rationale for these changes in structure was quite clearly that the Bureau Permanent had with the admission of new NMAs become much larger over more than half a century, while at the same time the frequency of International Conferences had declined. During the first 15 years of existence there were 11 International Conferences; in the 20 years between the First and Second World Wars there were 8 International Conferences, and in the 25 years from the first post-war conference of 1947 there were 10 International Conferences. Thus the interim responsibility of the Bureau Permanent, which normally met on an annual basis, was often spanning 3 or 4 years between conferences – apart from the periods of six years (1914-1920) and ten years (1937-1947) during wartime when no International Conferences were convened. By the late 1960’s it became clear that the International Conference could no longer serve as the supreme legislative organ of the CMI, that the Bureau Permanent had become too unwieldy to serve as the interim governing body, and that the Administrative Council had proven too limited in representation of NMAs to take over as the governing body.
The 1972 Antwerp Conference was wholly dedicated to reform of the constitutional structure of the Comité. The International Conference was constitutionally contemplated to convene at 3- or 4-year intervals and was replaced as the supreme authority of the CMI by an annual general Assembly of the NMAs. The Bureau Permanent was dissolved after 74 years and the Administrative Council after only 17 years, both being replaced by an Executive Council composed of the CMI officers and 6 representatives elected by the Assembly. The officers and the members of the Executive Council were elected for 3-year terms of office, all being elected at the same time by the Assembly. The indefinite number of Secretaries-General and Secretaries was replaced by one Secretary-General (Executive) and one Secretary-General (Administrative), with provision for an Administrative Officer which might be a body corporate rather than an individual. The remaining anomaly in this structure was the office of “one or more Vice-Presidents” which by custom had become 10 in number, elected from various geographical areas according to the pattern that had earlier become established for vice-presidents of diplomatic conferences. These “International Vice-Presidents” had no defined duties and were not constitutional members of the Executive Council, but again by custom attended sessions of the Executive Council as well as the annual meetings of the Assembly.
Another growing problem was that by the 1980’s a number of NMAs had fallen seriously in arrears of payment of their contributions. These were for the most part small national associations formed in the late 1960’s and 1970’s in developing countries who had been accorded the lowest category of assessment of contributions, but who for various reasons declined into a position of chronic non-payment.
|
