ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the issue of privatisation and restructuring of shipping corporations in the Baltic Sea countries in Eastern Europe. The analysis had to cope with dramatic and complex structural changes in a very short period of time, not to mention an extreme shortage of reliable data. The beginning of the transition period, currency rather than shipping functions dominates Polish as well as East German shipping. The deficiencies of centrally planned shipping describes had to be changes fundamentally during the transition processes. The level of influence that governments decide to exercise upon economic structures, different strengths of each of the named factors add up to the total transitional framework. The political disintegration of the Soviet Union brought about the problem of distributing the Soviet fleet among the newly independent states. The former Socialist shipping companies started offering services under market conditions and left behind the narrow process of central planning and regulation.
