A report published by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) has warned that ships and vessels continue to pollute EU maritime waters.
Even though EU legislation is improving and is sometimes even tougher than international rules, implementation by the 22 coastal EU member states is far from satisfactory. Actions to prevent, tackle, track and penalise various types of ship-source pollution are not up to the task, the auditors warn.
EU legislation incorporates relevant international rules – sometimes with even stricter requirements – in areas such as oil pollution, shipwrecks, and sulphur emissions. However, the EU auditors also warn of gaps that the EU still needs to fill, particularly as regards pollution risks. For instance, it is still possible for shipowners to circumvent their recycling obligations by adopting a non-EU flag before dismantling their ships.
The data speak for themselves: while 1 in every 7 ships in the world was flying the EU flag in 2022, the figure for the end-of-life fleet was 50% lower. Similarly, EU rules on containers lost at sea are far from watertight. First, there is no guarantee that all losses are declared; and second, very few containers are recovered.
Pollution at sea caused by ships remains a major problem, and despite a number of improvements in recent years, EU action is not really able to steer us out of troubled waters. In fact, with over three-quarters of European seas estimated to have a pollution problem, the zero-pollution ambition to protect people’s health, biodiversity and fish stocks is still not within sight.
… said Nikolaos Milionis, the ECA Member responsible for the audit.
The auditors also note that EU countries underuse tools – such as a network of standby oil-spill response vessels and drone detection – with which the EU provided them to help tackle ship-source pollution. A striking example is the European Satellite Oil Monitoring Service (CleanSeaNet) for surveillance and early detection of possible pollution incidents.
Key recommendations
The report proposes that the EU should:
#1 Improve the functioning and effectiveness of EMSA pollution alert tools
The Commission should, with the support of EMSA:
- provide guidelines to member states on actions to be taken and reporting obligations related to CleanSeaNet alerts;
- develop the technology and methodology for alerts on pollutants other than oil; and
- assess the reliability of EMSA’s pollution alerts and whether member states’ actions in response to the alerts are effective.
- Target implementation date: 2027
#2 Strengthen the monitoring of member states’ mandatory checks under EU directives
- The Commission should, with the support of EMSA, improve how member states report on their compliance with the requirements under EU directives to make checks and apply penalties or sanctions, for instance by setting reporting deadlines, reporting formats, and indicators.
- Target implementation date: 2028
#3 Follow up scaling-up issues in EU-funded projects
- The Commission, together with the member states, should follow up on issues relating to scaling up, which affect EU-funded projects that tackle ship-source pollution.
- Target implementation date: 2026
Enhance reporting and monitoring on the environmental status of marine waters
- The Commission should improve the harmonisation of monitoring and reporting on contaminants and marine litter, both among member states and to the Commission. This includes gaining access to comparable underlying data to better measure progress in the condition of the marine environment.
- Target implementation date: 2027
In 2022-2023, it identified a total of 7.731 possible spills in EU seas, mostly in Spain (1462), Greece (1367) and Italy (1188). However, the EU auditors found that member states acted on fewer than half of these alerts and confirmed pollution in only 7 % of cases, one reason for which was the time that elapsed between the satellite image being taken and the pollution actually being checked.
The auditors also found that member state authorities do not carry out enough preventive inspections of ships, and penalties for polluters remain low. Those responsible for illegally discharging polluting substances into the sea rarely face effective or dissuasive penalties, and prosecutions are rare. Similarly, few member states report breaches relating to the retrieval of abandoned, lost, or discarded fishing gear.
Overall, the auditors conclude that neither the European Commission nor the member states fully track the EU money used to combat seawater pollution. They do not have an overview of the results actually achieved, or of how they could be replicated on a larger scale. At the same time, the audit reveals that the EU has difficulties monitoring ship-source pollution. The actual amount of oil spills, contaminants and marine litter from ships remains largely unknown, as does the identity of polluters.
