Description: Leading our feature on European shipping week, Portuguese MEP João Ferreira outlines some of the changes that have occurred across recent decades in an industry that can "be credited for globalisation". He writes that, "As energy consumption evolves along with different ways of transporting goods, merchant shipping has accentuated its increasingly strategic nature and, therefore, so has the shipbuilding industry." Ferreira says, "faced with this scenario, this industrial activity must resume and must be granted additional stimulus". Also, the director general of the European commission’s DG for mobility and transport João Machado says he wants to "cut the administrative burden in maritime transport", but notes "the EU has adopted one of the world’s most comprehensive frameworks in the area of maritime safety".