No Maltese ships on EU blacklist

The European Commission yesterday announced a series of measures intended to ban substandard oil tankers from European waters following the environmental disaster in Spanish waters caused by the Prestige.

But no Maltese registered ships are on an indicative blacklist of 66 ships, representing 13 countries, released by the EU Commission. The Maltese flag is on the safety blacklist of a leading port inspection authority, the Paris Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Within the blacklist, Malta is classed as 'medium risk' flag as are Russia and Panama.

The Commission is proposing to prohibit the carriage of heavy fuel oil in single-hull oil tankers, such as the Prestige, and urged the EU summit in Copenhagen next week to give it a negotiating mandate to ensure that candidate countries, as well as neighbouring countries which are relevant for the heavy fuel oil trade in EU waters, apply the same principles, through administrative agreements within existing cooperation frameworks.

In addition to these key aspects, the Commission requested member states to speed up and implement the maritime safety measures which were adopted following the sinking of the Maltese-registered vessel Erika off the French coast three years ago.

Commission vice-president Loyola de Palacio, who is also responsible for transport and energy, said during yesterday's midday briefing that a radical overhaul was needed to ensure no repetition of the Prestige incident, in which the ship broke in two and sank to the seabed, with some 70,000 tons of fuel oil.

"Words are not enough. It is necessary to act and apply the maritime safety measures in full. Safety is the responsibility of everyone, and strict application of all the measures is the only way of ensuring that substandard ships do not fall through the safety net," she said.

The Commission took the initiative of publishing an indicative blacklist of 66 ships, representing 13 flags that have been detained on several occasions in European ports for failing to comply with maritime safety rules.

No Maltese registered ships are on the list, while no fewer than 26 of the 66 ships pertain to the Turkish flag.

The EU's spokesman for transport and energy, Giles Cantelet, was last week quoted as saying that Malta and Cyprus, two countries which have in the past been accused of flying a 'flag of convenience', were making good progress in upgrading their fleet and in applying the laws of the EU.

The Commission hopes that operators will refrain from chartering substandard ships and that the owners and flag states of the ships in question will apply the tougher maritime safety standards straight away.