Maritime and Transport Law Committee – From the Editors – August 2026

Sarah Gahlen
Lebuhn & Puchta, Hamburg

María Belén Espiñeira
ESPIÑEIRA Maritime Lawyers, Buenos Aires

Dear Members,

We are very happy to bring to you the upcoming edition of the IBA Maritime and Transport Law Committee Newsletter, which we hope will be interesting reading over the summer (or winter…) months. As the editors, we are very grateful for the numerous contributions that we received for this mid-year issue, and we have to say that we are quite proud of our very active committee!

In the present issue, you will find very topical contributions on the most recent developments in maritime and transport law from a wide range of jurisdictions, as well as articles giving an insight into ongoing issues that are of interest to legal practitioners and everyone else in the maritime business.

This edition contains contributions from Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Ethiopia, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates and the United States of America. We do hope that you enjoy the views and perspectives shared by our authors from all over the world.

And, of course, this newsletter presents a new opportunity to ‘Meet your Officer’! This time, our AI Officer, Annemieke Spijker from the Netherlands, has answered our questions.

This publication would not be possible without the efforts from ‘behind the scenes’. We are grateful to all the committee members who spread the word of our call for contributions, to our committee chairs and to the IBA publishing team. Last but not least, we would like to give our sincere thanks to all contributors, for their efforts in providing us with articles and for their willingness to share their knowledge and insights.

We would like to strongly encourage members to submit contributions for future editions – we count on you for the next issue too! We hope that the newsletter can be a starting point for many connections and discussions between our members in the upcoming months, and during the IBA Annual Conference in Copenhagen in October. We are looking forward to getting in touch with you!

Kind regards,

María Belén Espineira

Sarah Gahlen