Community of European Shipyards Associations represents the shipbuilding industry from 17 Member States (Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and United Kingdom).

CESA has a long tradition as representative organisation and could look back proudly to decades of fruitful cooperation and constructive dialogue.

Starting in 1937 as "International Shipbuilding Conference", it was re-established after the war as "West European Shipbuilders Informal Contacts" and renamed in 1965 to "Association of West European Shipbuilders", AWES. In the 1980ies, AWES established an EC-linking committee, which later on, mainly for administrative reasons, became a separate sister organisation under the name of CESA.

In 2004, AWES and CESA decided to go back to the initial one-organisation structure - the COMMUNITY OF EUROPEAN SHIPYARDS' ASSOCIATIONS or, CESA, which had become a well-established trademark in the maritime world as well as in the predominant field of EC related activities.