Many jobs
According to the project members of the skippers without borders project, between 50 and 75 000 permanent or occasional skippers work and move in the different countries of the European Union. They estimate that there are 60,000 charter boats operating in Europe, for an annual turnover in the sector of 6 million euros.
National management in a European market
Skipper diplomas are a purely national competence. To date, there is no automatic recognition of equivalence between the qualifications of the different European countries. The study is done on a case by case basis by the person in charge of the file.
In a context of worker mobility on a European scale, or even more, this lack of visibility and a common approach generates many administrative difficulties for charter companies or chartering agencies that employ seafarers.
Proposals from professionals
In order to facilitate their economic activity, the rental, charter and maritime training professionals have set up the skippers sans frontières project in order to offer administrations tools for comparing and validating what they have learned.
Two main results are now freely available online:
- An online qualification comparison rule
- A common reference base.
A comparison tool
The project team has sorted all the skills acquired in the Croatian, Czech, French, German, Slovenian, English and Spanish national diplomas. Each is defined as a fundamental brick allowing comparison between different countries. Each diploma is a set of bricks. The specific bricks correspond to the special expectations of each country.
A basis for harmonisation
Thanks to the work carried out on skills, each skipper can easily determine what skills he lacks to exercise in the waters of a new member country. The presentation allows to visualize the remaining distance to reach a harmonization of the legislations. It also allows an administration to request only the specific training necessary for an already qualified seafarer and not to retake the full national diploma.
A collaborative tool
Captains, administrations, rental companies... are invited to give their opinion on the study on the site http://www.tcc-scv.eu.
