Luxembourg, 09/10/2003 (Agence Europe) - The Transport Council adopted joint guidelines on the proposal of regulation aimed at improving the safety of ships and port installations by transposing the new international safety measures, adopted by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) in December 2002, into Community law. Approving the compromise text proposed by the Italian Presidency, the Transport Ministers, who met in Luxembourg, managed to reach an agreement on the scope of the regulation and provisions concerning the obligation on vessels entering a Community port to provide information. The European Parliament has still to give its stance at first reading on this issue (codecision).
The aim of the draft regulation, adopted on 8 May by the European Commission, is to improve the safety of the transport logistics chain (in this case vessels and port installations) by imposing new IMO safety measures on Community territory, such as the obligation to establish safety plans or adopt specific measures for training seafaring personnel (EUROPE of 9 May, p.11). The Commission's proposal, however, goes still further since it seeks to impose these measures on certain types of national maritime transport (and not just international transport). Apart from Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, which are in favour of this provision, most national delegations are opposed to it. Ministers have therefore agreed to the Presidency compromise: Member States will have to impose IMO safety measures for some kinds of passenger vessels carrying out national passenger services (vessels of the so-called category A, i.e. the largest and those travelling the furthest from shore). On the other hand, for all the other ships carrying out national services, and after having compulsorily conducted an analysis to assess the level of safety of such vessels, it is up to the Member States to decide whether or not to impose such safety measures. Delegations also agreed, still on the basis of a Presidency compromise, on the provisions concerning information to be provided by vessels. The Member States will still have to demand that vessels entering their ports provide a whole series of information certifying that they are conform to international safety provisions. The Member States, however, will be free to do what they wish with the information received (and for example to verify or not how true such information is), whereas the Commission wished to impose compulsory monitoring.
Finally, ministers also found a compromise on a more technical aspect of the proposal: - any purely technical modification of IMO safety measures will be dealt with using comitology procedure while substantive amendments will be treated within the codecision framework.