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- For vessels, the operator is “the natural person or the legal unit responsible for the commercial decisions concerning the employment of a ship and the one who decides how and where that asset is employed. The direct beneficiary of the profits from the operations of the asset may also be responsible for purchasing decisions on bunkers and port services”.
- The term “air operator” refers to a natural person residing in a member State or a legal unit established in a member State that uses one or more aircraft in accordance with the regulations applicable in that member State, or a European Union air carrier, as defined in European Union legislation (Council Regulation (EEC) No. 3922/91 of 16 December 1991 on the harmonization of technical requirements and administrative procedures in the field of civil aviation).
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23.A.4. Data sources. Given the complexity of the definition and measurement of trade in vessels and aircrafts, it was recognized that a single data source could not comply with the legal requirements (involving, for example: different managements of vessels/aircraft registers and completeness of data source). Consequently, a set of different data sources were identified: standard customs data, the Fairplay World Register[121] of ships and, where possible, multilateral cooperation and exchange of information between partner countries. Finally, a case-study approach has been used, in order to optimally exploit the integration of all the available information.
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23.A.6. Two illustrative cases. In the first case, a shipbuilding company inItaly sold a super-luxury cruise ship to a company established in an offshore country and regularly presented a customs declaration. However, the economic owner was another company based inItaly, which used the ship to organize cruises. This transaction was excluded fromItaly’s foreign trade data, because the seller and the new economic owner were established in the same country. In the second case, a shipbuilding company inItaly sold a super-luxury cruise ship to a multinational corporation established in theUnited States of America. However, the operator of the asset was a company belonging to the same corporation established in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Hence, a transaction betweenItaly and theUnited Kingdom was recorded. In both cases, all the above mentioned sources were crucial to decision-making.
[121] The Fairplay World Register is an international database developed and maintained by IHS Fairplay for maritime safety (according to international agreements) and business purposes, based on direct contact with the respondents, profiling of complex multinational corporations and publicly available information (e.g., from the Internet and newspapers).
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