While European legislation is making progress, sometimes to the point of being stricter than international rules, its implementation by the EU’s 22 coastal Member States is inadequate, according to the latest report from the EU Court of Auditors, published on Tuesday 4 March (see EUROPE 13573/13). Furthermore, the data available is not sufficient to measure the results of European measures.
The Court found that the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) has provided Member States with useful tools to tackle pollution from ships, but that they have not made full use of them. The European satellite system for detecting oil spills and ships, ‘CleanSeaNet’, does not have similar capabilities for other pollutants.
According to Nikolaos Milionis, a member of the Court, only 45 chemical substances were measured out of the thousands of commercial products used. In addition, it was rarely possible to establish a link between the contaminants measured and the sources. “The European Commission has worked on common criteria methodologies to measure pollution, but the interpretation varies across Member States”, he explained to the press.
“We see that there are a number of alerts that come in every day, and what we regret is that there’s not enough effort in the Member States to go and check on these alerts”, added Kristian Sniter, an auditor at the Court. For example, some countries such as Germany and Denmark achieve a confirmation rate of 30% of alert cases. “This is quite a good score compared to the EU average, which is at 7%”, he added.
The Court has therefore made four recommendations to the Commission - improve the monitoring and effectiveness of pollution alert tools; - strengthen the monitoring of Member States’ mandatory checks; - follow up scaling-up issues in EU-funded projects; - enhance reporting and monitoring on the environmental status of marine waters.
In its response, the Commission recalled the adoption, in November 2024, of the ‘maritime safety package’ to support clean, safer and modern shipping in the EU (see EUROPE 13526/31). It has accepted all the recommendations.
Read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/fq7
Read the Commission’s response: https://aeur.eu/f/fq6 (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)