OBLIGATION OF THE CARGO CARRIER TO BRING THE VESSEL TO A SEAWORTHY STATE:PROBLEMS OF LEGAL REGULATION

Abstract

The bulk of cargo in international trade is transported by sea. The demand for maritime freight and their importance forensuring international economic relations are only growing with the expansion of foreign trade and the deepening of the worlddivision of labor. The general interest in merchant shipping in Russia is also supported by one of the priority state projects - thedevelopment of the Northern Sea Route. For the carriage of goods by sea, the most important and primary duty of the carrier must be to bring the ship to seaworthiness. The purpose of the article is to conduct a comparative legal analysis of the sources of domestic and international lawgoverning the carrier's duty to bring the vessel to a navigable state and to identify problems existing in the regulatory frameworkof this institution, as well as problems arising during the implementation of the considered duty by the parties of the contract forthe carriage of goods as foreign economic deal. The author believes that the legislator should bring these provisions in line with the Hague-Visby rules or explain the procedurefor the application of these rules in the decision of the Plenum of the Supreme court of the Russian Federation. Another problem considered, which greatly complicates the procedure for the implementation of relations for the carriage ofgoods by sea and puts the parties in a position in which there are no guarantees of the performance of each of their obligationsin relation to the other, is the real nature of the contract for the carriage of goods by sea. Due to the displacement of the momentof the agreement, the carrier has no guarantees that the ship submitted by him will be demanded, and the shipper does not haveguarantees that the vessel for loading in proper condition will be presented for the transportation of the cargo declared by him.