De Palacio finalises plans to boost maritime safety

Date: 16/03/2000

By Renée Cordes

The European Commission will unveil a raft of long-awaited proposals next week aimed at ensuring ships crossing EU waters meet the highest possible safety standards.

Transport chief Loyola de Palacio has drawn up the proposals, which are due to be adopted by the full Commission next Tuesday (21 March), in response to growing pressure from both MEPs and environmental campaigners to minimise the risks of future accidents following last year's Erika disaster.

The Maltese-flagged tanker broke up and sank last December, releasing an oil slick into the waters off the French Atlantic coast which affected more than 30,000 birds and has put the region's tourism industry at risk.

In the same month, a Russian tanker carrying heavy fuel oil was also damaged in bad weather, causing major ecological damage off the coast of Istanbul.

"The measures taken to improve safety and lessen pollution have resulted in a significant decrease in both accidents and oil pollution," argues De Palacio in her draft report. "However, there is no room for complacency."

The Commissioner's battery of tough measures includes calls for older, single-hull ships to be phased out and replaced with more modern vessels and new requirements for ships to be inspected while in port.

De Palacio will also recommend giving member states the power to oversee the regulation of firms which carry out these inspections and stop them from operating if they are deemed unsatisfactory.

The multi-pronged approach suggested by De Palacio comes after MEPs condemned the Union's maritime sector for lax safety standards earlier this month and called for an EU legal framework on marine pollution to be adopted quickly.

They warned that contamination from the Erika was much more widespread than first realised and demanded that the ship's operators accept liability and finance the clean-up, including compensating victims and paying for ecological damage.

The European Community Shipowners' Association says that while it welcomes most of the planned measures, it would be premature to phase out single-hull ships before undertaking an extensive study into how many vessels would be affected and the potential costs to industry.

"Before the Commission takes a decision of such magnitude it should study the possible economic consequences," said secretary-general Alfons Guinier, who argued that such regulations should be left to worldwide agencies such as the International Maritime Organisation given the global nature of the industry.

The European Commission is to unveil a raft of long-awaited proposals aimed at ensuring ships crossing EU waters meet the highest possible safety standards.