Maritime Skills Forum: well-trained seafarers securing Europe's future

Nautilus head of international Danny McGowan explains the Union's international work on seafarer skills at a recent event in Brussels

On 21 January 2025, I represented Nautilus International alongside my colleague from the Netherlands branch assistant general secretary Sascha Meijer and Council member Henk Eijkenaar at the European Maritime Skills Forum (MSF) launch event in Brussels.

The MSF is a joint initiative of the European Transport Workers' Federation (ETF) and European Community Shipowners' Associations (ECSA), supported by the European Commission. It brings together maritime stakeholders from across Europe including policymakers, industry, unions, researchers, and training providers – and it has been designed to continue the work of the Skillsea Project that Nautilus also took part in, thus representing a good opportunity for the Union to influence dialogue and policy in favour of seafarers.

It has three key workstreams:

• green skills
• digital transformation
• leadership, mentoring and resilience skills (including bullying and harassment strategies)

Introductions

Ms Meijer attended as Chair of the ETF Maritime Transport Section (MTS) EU Committee, and sectoral social dialogue spokesperson. In her opening remarks, she spelled out why this work is so important, emphasising that this is an opportunity for people across the continent to learn from each other to build the maritime skills agenda, and that the two partner organisations were happy to continue the project to ensure well-trained seafarers and increase Europe's autonomy in an unstable world.

In his statement on behalf of the shipowners, ECSA secretary general Sotiris Raptis highlighted the Draghi report, which found that in response to changing technology 250,000 seafarers in Europe will need to reskill – which will help the continent to maintain a competitive edge – but this can only be done by investing in training and education.

What is needed?

During the MSF launch Nautilus took part in several panels. During the plenary section, with a panel that included representatives from the European Commission, ECSA, academia and nation states, Ms Meijer took the opportunity to answer questions on the attractiveness of the industry, pointing out that: 'Attractiveness is not only about reputation and image. Those who choose to be a seafarer and remain a seafarer do not need to be convinced by the image of the industry but need to be treated well.' She emphasised that shoreside practices around good careers and wellbeing should be normalised at sea, and that work/life balance is also an important consideration for the industry if it wishes to attract and retain talent.

'Former shortages of labour lead us to bring in labour from overseas. That necessity has then turned into a business case for normal operations and has impacted wages. Those European seafarers that we do have are then competing with worldwide seafarers on a lower wage level. When other industries have a shortage, they have to become better, but when the maritime industry has a shortage it draws on the worldwide labour force. We have to do better for seafaring to remain attractive to European citizens,' she said.

Automation

I took part in a panel on the Digital Transformation, in which I presented important statistics from the Nautilus Federation's Mapping Our Maritime Future report. Referencing the World Maritime University's reports on fatigue, I pointed out to delegates that new digital tools can be used to reduce the long working hours culture in order to attract European seafarers to the industry.

This was a chance to discuss the Just Transition, with technology used to reduce monotonous and time consuming tasks, allowing seafarers to concentrate on critical aspects of ship operation. The statistics from our report show that seafarers generally support automation where it does not replace crew and where it can help in this way.

Changing management style

Mr Eijkenaar took part in a panel on Leadership, Mentoring, and Resilience Skills. He said: 'In the past, young people who went onboard were used to being given orders. Newer generations are not so used to this, but those who are now in leadership positions were the ones who were used to being given orders, and some act in the same way to new trainees. I have seen many apprentices/cadets never going back to sea due to not being supported in the right way onboard, but it isn't the fault of senior officers as they've never been trained.'

In response, fellow panellist Camille Debandt of Antwerp Maritime Academy said that she had seen encouraging signs that younger officers are willing to break the cycle of 'I went through this so you should too' in favour of a more supportive leadership style at sea.