Press Release: Maritime accidents: how long will the European Union suffer from oil spills?

Following the maritime accident in the Baltic sea in March 2001, which resulted in an oil spill which threatened the Danish coast, Loyola de Palacio, European Commission Vice-President in charge of transport, expressed her deep concern about repeated accidents in European waters which gave a serious threat to the marine environment and the European coastline. She said that the proposal on the establishment of a European Community monitoring, control and information system for maritime traffic, could have helped to avoid such accidents. She hoped that both the European Parliament and the Council would progress rapidly on the two sets of measures presented by the Commission since the Erika accident, in order to show the capacity of the European Union to guard against future catastrophes of this kind.

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