The Italian legal framework on maritime safety: recent developments and future perspectives

Maritime navigation has always been characterized by risks and dangers that derive from the surrounding environment, creating the need to establish a cross-border legal framework, based more on conflict prevention rather than on purely reactive operations. Maritime safety is unanimously considered as a complex transnational issue that has given rise to the importance of international cooperation for developing an integrated defence policy and appropriate safeguards which take into account the multiplicity of economic and legal aspects involved. The evolution of traffic over the last few decades and the scientific and technological progress in the global shipping market have profoundly affected the methods of protecting navigation safety, translating results from research development into a cross-sectoral defence strategy and implementing measures, in the context of a legislative process that is currently on-going. In this perspective, new navigation techniques and more sophisticated methods of shipbuilding have been developed to improve maritime safety with the aim of protecting the marine environment and human life at sea.