Ferry Business - Spring/Summer 2021

8 9 Video calls have allowed the IMO to hold virtual meetings and continue discussing important industry issues and regulations throughout the pandemic schedule to get these very comprehensive, complex and, for the industry, extremely disconcerting mandatory requirements in place, my initial thought last spring was that Covid-19 would derail the entire process and we would fall back to square one at best. In fact, it has been quite the contrary. While the old adage that “most work at the IMO is done during coffee breaks” is indeed correct, it can now be complemented with the insight that allowing member states, industry organisations, non-governmental organisations and the IMO Secretariat to work virtually in organic, ad hoc, non-scheduled groupings has been surprisingly effective. From December 2020 to February 2021, we engaged in a hugely time- constrained IMO Correspondence Group trying to figure out which of all the balls we have in the air we should keep juggling with, and which ones should be dropped for being unworkable in our maritime sector. This debate, and the consequent submissions, would be very challenging to conclude on schedule within the conventional IMO setting. It has taken a large effort by many, an excruciating effort by a few, and we have yet to see this come to fruition – but in the virtual arena, I think we will actually succeed. It will be very interesting to see how we arrange ourselves post-Covid-19. I, for one, miss the interaction with all colleagues at the IMO, but my per hour output has skyrocketed since I no longer have to spend all those hours getting to and from London, and even more hours waiting for our issues to be raised. CFR Johan Roos is regulatory affairs director at Interferry “ Allowing member states, industry organisations, non-governmental organisations and the IMO Secretariat to work has been surprisingly effective”