Brussels, 24/06/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 23 June, the Greens Group at the European Parliament called for a moratorium on new offshore drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea and in European waters. They also urged the EU to consider extending the EU's environmental liability directive to include damage to marine water and to delete the exclusion of liability for oil spill incidents outside European waters. The EU is in no way prepared to tackle the consequences of an oil slick resulting from an offshore drilling failure. With regard to the issue of safety and responsibility, aspects involving offshore oil drilling still remain unresolved, explained Michèle Rivasi (France), Bas Eickhout (the Netherlands) and Bart Staes (Belgium) on Thursday, in light of the recent disaster that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico. “The EU has a huge amount of work to accomplish in the area of prevention in the event of offshore drilling accidents. It must provide itself with binding rules in the domain of legal liability and what responses should be provided to disasters of this nature. At the moment, there are no guarantees of sufficient funds for cleaning up the coast after accidents and for compensating the victims of this kind of accident”, explained Rivasi. The Greens are calling for a moratorium on new offshore drilling as long as there is no clarity with regard to the legal and regulatory framework governing activities that could potentially be extremely damaging. The Greens are also calling on the Commission and the Council to update the mandate of the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), so that it is able to tackle oil slicks resulting from offshore drilling. Currently, EMSA is only able to tackle oil slick problems resulting from oil tanker accidents. The European Parliament will debate this question with the Council and European Commission during the July plenary in Strasbourg. (E.H./transl.fl)