Rarely has a four-letter acronym struck so much terror and caused so much chaos in shipping company offices across Europe and beyond.
But the innocent-sounding GDPR is doing just that, causing executives and managers nightmares in the run-up to implementation on 25 May.
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, to give it its full name, touches any organisation that processes the personal data of consumers and citizens inside the EU.
That catches a lot of people in shipping, and the penalties for non-compliance are harsh at €20m ($24m) or 4% of annual global turnover. Yes, that’s right, not just in Europe but global turnover.
And it is not just about digital data, but hard-copy material too, with tonnes of documents likely to be heading to the shredder and incinerator as we speak.
Yet in Greece, as so often is the case in shipping, some appear to have their own idiosyncratic way of complying with new rules, as the photograph here reveals.
One eagle-eyed TradeWinds reader was walking past what he called “a typical Piraeus rubbish pile” the other afternoon, only to spot crew documentation and files blowing down the street.
Our source — the chief executive of a small shipowner — reflected that it showed “how our colleagues in the industry are preparing for GDPR compliance”.
Since dozens of so-called GDPR experts offer advice that even personnel files of crew should not be left on employees' desks, such a breach of the regulations could land shipowners in hot water.
