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The Shipping Tribunal
In Denmark a special Shipping Tribunal has been established in accordance with the Danish Act on Safety at Sea.
The Tribunal consists of a chairman and a number of expert members appointed by the Danish Minister of Economic and Business Affairs. The chairman must be a High Court Judge and the members are nominated by the ship owners and the seafarers organisations.
Decisions made by the Danish Shipping Tribunal may be brought before a court of law.
The Tribunal can consider complaints against different decisions made by the Danish Maritime Authority, including detention of ships.
The Secretariat for the tribunal is located at the Danish Maritime Authority, 38 C Vermundsgade, DK-2100 Copenhagen.
Please feel free to contact the secretariat for further information by phone (+45 3917 4621) or e-mail anke@dma.dk.
Particularly the possibility of complaining about decisions concerning detentions of foreign ships in Danish ports might have interest for foreign ship owners and need therefore to be highlighted below.
Information concerning the possibility of raising a complaint must be given to the master of a foreign ship detained in a Danish port by the Danish Port State Control inspector.
Only the ship owner (company) of the ship concerned can raise a complaint.
The complaint must be given to the secretariat of the Tribunal before 4 weeks from the decision on detention is taken.
It is the Tribunal’s goal that 80 % of the complaints received are achieved within 4 months after the complaint has been brought for the Tribunal.
Read the rules of procedure for the Tribunal here.
After having received a complaint, the Secretariat will request the Danish Maritime Authority (DMA) to comment on the complaint from the ship owner or shipping company. Normally the DMA is given a couple of weeks to produce such a paper.
The comments from the DMA will subsequently be forwarded to the ship owner or shipping company and the owner/company will be asked to respond to these.
After having received the reply from the company, the secretariat will prepare the case for the Tribunal. The material presented to the Tribunal will consist of a description of the case with the complaint, the comments from the DMA and the respond from the owner/company as annex’s.
The owner/company and the DMA will receive the same material as the Tribunal and will be given a couple of weeks to comment on the material.
The Chairman of the Tribunal will call in the Tribunal, which normally in such cases will consist of two representatives appointed by the Danish Ship Owners Association and two representatives appointed by the Danish Maritime Officers Organisation.
The decision of the Tribunal will be given to the owner/company shortly after it has been settled. The decision will be in Danish, but will be translated into English within a couple of weeks.
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