On Tuesday 20 May, negotiators from the European Parliament and the Polish Presidency of the EU Council reached a provisional agreement to more accurately align the mandate of the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). EMSA’s role has thus been strengthened (see EUROPE 13499/19, 13369/21).
As the latest text in the maritime safety package (see EUROPE 13526/31), this new regulation will provide EMSA with a more suitable legal basis for fulfilling its tasks in a number of areas, such as pollution prevention and response, decarbonisation, surveillance and raising awareness of the maritime world.
“Revising the agency’s mandate will better reflect ESMA’s current and future role and make the agency future-proof”, said Marek Gróbarczyk, Poland’s Minister of Marine Economy and Inland Navigation.
The aim of this revision is to enable the Agency to provide more assistance to EU countries in improving their maritime situational awareness in the face of new geopolitical challenges, such as Russia’s war against Ukraine. It will provide them and the European Commission with technical, operational and scientific assistance.
EMSA will provide assistance for the implementation of the ‘FuelEU Maritime Regulation’ on infrastructure for alternative fuels (see EUROPE 13561/8) and the extension of the ‘Emissions Trading System’ (‘ETS’) to maritime transport (see EUROPE 13618/18). To do this, it will use improved monitoring tools to detect and deter illegal discharges at sea, while also developing its emissions monitoring systems and facilitating their reporting.
It will also be responsible for digitalisation and reducing the administrative burden for the maritime sector. As requested by MEPs, it will provide training to Member States, for example on how to carry out safety inspections and how to digitalise maritime registers.
Finally, the review aims to ensure that the Agency has adequate human and financial resources to carry out these tasks. Based in Lisbon, Portugal, it has over 290 employees.
This provisional agreement must be approved by the Member States’ representatives to the EU (Coreper) and by the European Parliament. The new regulation will come into force 20 days after its publication in the Official Journal of the EU. (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)