The Maritime Policy - Common Concern

By Heiki Lindpere

Importance of the maritime trade and resources as well as the standard of living in coastal areas could not be overrated. For example 2/3 of EU borders (30,000 km) are the maritime borders; maritime transport carries  over  90%  of foreign  and  40%  of internal trade; 1200 ports handle  annually  more than 3,5 billion tons of cargo, serve  more  than 350 million passengers; 0,8 million highly qualified  people  are engaged in shipbuilding with  annual  turnover more than 90 billion euro. Therfore European Union as  a  whole  and  its 27 members are intensively working today on an integrated  maritime policies.

Estonia is well-known as a seagoing nation, having thousands of islands and overall coastline of 3793 km, several ports with overall annual turnover in 2007 of 44,7 million tons of cargo and 6,8 million passengers in international traffic only. The City Government of Tallinn and the Estonian Maritime Academy have layed firm foundation for the future co-operation by concluding  respective agreement on  15 May 2008. This agreement is in full conformity with one of the 5 EU objectives,  namely it aims at „building a  knowledge  and innovation base"  for the integrated maritime policy which is called „comprehensive  and robust".  Perhaps  one should know that the Estonian Maritime Academy provides wide range of education in maritime affairs: it has today 823 students of professional higher education and 38 graduate students; in its Maritime School there are 285 pupils of secondary vocational education.

This framework agreement allows the City Government more profoundly deal with all kind of maritime and related affairs on the one hand and gives a strong impulse for the development of the Estonian Maritime Academy on the other. Project based research with involvment of the Academy's teaching staff and researches of Academy's R&D Center are planned. Moreover, the establishment of a Short Sea Shipping Promotion Center is discussed.