Italy - Insurers stung by multi-million dollar claims over the Concordia shipwreck will demand higher safety standards from the cruise industry, a lawyer who will file suits this month against Carnival Corp for more than 70 plaintiffs said on Thursday.

"There are many ways of bringing about change. One is legislation, but the second one is private. In a pure capitalism world, if the insurance company has to pay more money for claims then they will have more (safety and training) requirements," said U.S. lawyer John Arthur Eaves.

Eaves represents clients from six countries and is urging other survivors and relatives of victims of the wreck of the Costa Concordia liner to sue the parent company in the United States rather than the subsidiary in Italy to increase compensation payments and help push through worldwide changes.

"By increasing the value of each claim, it makes the cruise industry take notice so that in the future they will invest more in training, in technology and they will cooperate with the proposed changes that we hope to make with the law," he told a news conference.

"We will focus on the practices of Carnival because we believe they set the industry standards and set the pace."