President of Malta addresses Conference on Maritime Affairs

As part of the three-day conference, "Law, strategy and policy in the Mediterranean:Past, Present and Future", organised by the International Maritime Law Institute jointly with the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies, and with the Institute of International Security Studies of Yale University, a commemorative session, marking three hundred years of the Consolato di Mare in Malta, was held at the Office of the President, in Valletta.

The President presented a talk which traced the historical genesis and gave the contemporary perspective to the setting up of the Consolato di Mare in 1697. He showed how Malta's importance in the maritime affairs of the Mediterranean grew both through its natural geographical position and through the security guaranteed by the Order, as a maritime power in its own right. This commemoration was held in the room which Grand Master Perellos, who introduced the Consolato,had decorated and which still wears his coat-of-arms.

The idea of Malta having a significant role in international maritime affairs still holds water today, with the current efforts at internationalisation of the laws governing the use of the sea and the sea-bed, the President stressed.

Professor David J. Attard, the Director of the International Maritime Law Institute, delivered the commemorative lecture entitled "The Relevance of Consolato di Mare to contemporary Maritime Law." Professor Attard traced the history of the various Consolati di Mare in the Mediterranean and paid tribute to various maritime law scholars, including Dr John Colombos, a Maltese who wrote a "monumental" work entitled "International Law of the Sea."