Dear CMI 2008 Delegates and friends,

The 39th CMI Conference held in Athens between 12 and 17 Octobwer 2008 has now come to an end. We hope that all of you who participated enjoyed the Conference and the beautiful surroundings assisted by the lovely weather. During the Conference many topics of great interest were dealt with and, among others, a Draft Instrument on the Places of Refuge and Guidelines in respect of Procedural Rules relating to Limitation of Liability in Maritime Law were adopted.

You can still visit our website where you can find all the relevant Conference documentation and Conference results as well as selected photos.

The Organizing Committee
of the 39th CMI Conference

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Taking over from the very successful Colloquium organised by the South African Maritime Law Association and hosted at Cape Town in February 2006 and the excellent joint symposium on maritime law of Dubrovnik in May 2007 organized by the Croatian Maritime Law Association, the CMI will reconvene in Athens, Greece in October 2008. The Greek Maritime Law Association and the Comite Maritime International are pleased to invite you to the 39th CMI Conference which will be held between 12 and 17 October 2008.

The CMI will return to Greece after 46 years. The 25th CMI Conference was held in Athens in 1962 and was attended by approximately 240 delegates from 21 countries. It is a great honour for the Greek Maritime Law Association to host for a second time the CMI Conference in Greece, a nation whose maritime history goes back thousands of years. And even now, Greece is very closely linked with the shipping industry. The Greek controlled fleet maintains the first position world wide in terms of both number of vessels and tonnage. Piraeus, Greece's largest port is a hub between Europe and the Middle East, and a maritime cluster itself.