The Cyprus Shipping Deputy Ministry (SDM) has announced a new range of green incentives to reward vessels that demonstrate effective emissions reductions. From fiscal year 2021, annual tonnage tax will be reduced by up to 30 percent for each vessel that demonstrates proactive measures to reduce its environmental impact, ensuring shipowners are rewarded for sustainable shipping efforts.

Just before the end of 2020, which has challenged humanity due to a world pandemic, the Cyprus Shipping Chamber (CSC) expressed its sincere gratitude to the hardworking seafarers who are keeping the world supplied with food, fuel, medical equipment and other vital goods through the symbolic initiative ‘Seafarers Deliver for Us, We Walk for Them’, held on December 31, 2020.

 The Cyprus Shipping Chamber’s president and members of its board of directors made a symbolic 10 km walk, from the Old Limassol Port right along the seafront to the old Amathusia Area, as a tribute to seafarers across the world for their valuable contribution and to show their solidarity against the discrimination they are facing during the Covid-19 pandemic, despite being key workers at the front line.

The Cyprus Shipowners Employers' Association (CYSEA), the sister employer association of the Cyprus Shipping Chamber (CSC), signed with the two Cyprus seafarers trade unions, SEK and PEO, the renewal of the Cyprus Collective Bargaining Agreement for Seafarers employed on Cyprus flag ships. The Cyprus Employers and Industrialists Federation (OEB) is also a co-signatory to the agreement.

The Cyprus Shipping Deputy Ministry (SDM) has recently announced the launch of a tender process to reinstate a maritime passenger link between Cyprus and Greece, subsidised by state funds.

With the European Commission having announced in early 2020 an increased climate target for 2030 and aiming to extend the EU's Emission Trading System (EU ETS) to the shipping sector, the Cyprus Shipping Deputy Ministry organised a virtual debate entitled ‘ETS in Shipping: Elixir or Threat to Sustainability?’, on December 07, 2020, together with the Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development and Environment and the European Parliament Office in Cyprus.

The Cyprus Shipping Chamber (CSC) and the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN), signed a memorandum of cooperation (MoC), on 16 November 16, with the aim to collaborate on the eradication of corruption in the maritime sector and to safeguard a fair and sustainable maritime operating environment.