Convention on Judicial Sales of Ships: Newsletter 2/2023

Of course the highlight of the past 6 months as far as our Convention on the International Effects of judicial Ships is concerned was the magnificent signing ceremony in Beijing on the 5th September 2023 – such a special moment for all of us at the CMI who have been working on this project since 2008. The convention was signed by 15 states which were China, Burkina Faso, Comoros, Grenada, Honduras, Sao Tome and Principe, Kiribati, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Liberia, Switzerland, Syria, Sierra Leone, Senegal and El Salvador.

In the meantime the European Commission in June of 2023 approved the policy to be adopted by the Council enabling EU member states to sign and ratify the convention. It is with great pleasure that we announce that the EU Council finalised all the formalities only last week. It is therefore hoped that the Commission itself as well as EU Member states will sign up to the Convention during 2024.

The EU is determined that EU Member states have access to all the right information. In fact in September of this year the Commission together with the Spanish Presidency of the EU Council organised a symposium on the Convention. The Symposium gathered all the key representatives from the Ministries of Justice of each EU Member State and it was a perfect opportunity to explain how the Convention works. No less than 4 of the members of our IWG on the Convention presented during the symposium. These were myself, Eduardo Albors, Peter Laurijssen, Petar Kragic and Jan Erik Poetschke.

The efforts being made by the various members of our IWG in promoting the Convention at various fora and by offering support to various governmental and state institutions underlines the important role for CMI which goes beyond the drafting of Conventions. The role is central to the subsequent signing and ratification of Conventions once those Conventions are adopted.