EU Council and Parliament Cave in to Shipping Industry Lobby
The NGO Shipbreaking Platform and European Environmental Bureau (EEB), and the more than 160 environmental, human and labour rights organisations they represent, denounce the new EU Regulation on ship recycling voted by the European Council, and already approved by the European Parliament, for effectively postponing and possibly ridding the EU with its responsibility to provide solutions to the global shipbreaking crisis.
The NGO coalition warns that the Regulation will fail to change the current state of play. European shipping interests will continue to make significant financial profits by externalizing environmental and human health costs to the shipbreaking beaches of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, and to the exploited workforce there.
The Regulation may direct a very limited scope of ships registered under an EU flag to “green” listed ship recycling facilities, those that are built to adequately contain hazardous materials – an effective ban on the breaking of EU flagged ships on tidal beaches. But the Regulation does nothing to prevent shipowners from jumping register to a non-EU flag prior to sending their ships for breaking in order to avoid falling under the requirements of the new EU law [2]. In fact, the Regulation may even have the unintended effect of shrinking the number of ships registered under an EU flag, and therefore making the Regulation counterproductive to other EU initiatives aimed at building a more robust EU fleet.
“We fear that the Regulation will end up applying to very few ships” said Jeremy Wates, Secretary General of the EEB. “Unless an economic incentive for all ships calling at EU ports is rapidly introduced, circumvention of the law will persist, and the European shipping industry will continue to be at the heart of scandals involving severe pollution of coastal zones and exploitation of vulnerable workers in developing countries,” he added.
Recent studies have proposed an array of possible mechanisms to implement the polluter pays principle, which would focus on the shipowner, and have clearly shown that a financial incentive for proper ship recycling is legally feasible, enforceable, and necessary.
The NGOs welcome that the Council accepted the European Parliament’s proposal to bind all ships calling at EU ports to have an inventory of hazardous materials (IHM) that are contained within the vessels’ structure, a prerequisite for clean and safe ship recycling. The shipping industry already pledged years ago to equip vessels with such an IHM. Yet most ships go for breaking with an unknown amount of hazardous materials on board, many even falsely claiming to be toxic free.
The Parliament also succeeded in convincing the Council to support requirements for ship recycling facilities that go beyond those set in the International Maritime Organisation’s – yet to enter into force – Hong Kong Convention. Most importantly, beaching sites will not be approved for EU listing, which prevents EU flagged ships from being beached. But, large shipping nations such as Greece, Malta, Cyprus blocked additional measures proposed by the European Parliament to strengthen the Regulation, such as ensuring traceability of hazardous wastes dumped in developing countries and clearly linking liability for these wastes to the polluter, who in this case is the shipowner.
“We are concerned that the shortcomings of the Regulation will make it ineffective, and worse still, that the EU could be setting a dangerous precedent for other industries that want to avoid being held accountable to international environmental laws” said Patrizia Heidegger, Director of the NGO Shipbreaking Platform.
The ship recycling Regulation that was voted today in Council exempts ships from the European Waste Shipment Regulation, which aims at protecting developing countries from the dumping of hazardous wastes and incorporates the United Nations Basel Convention and its Basel Ban Amendment [4]. There are clear and compelling legal opinions proving that this unilateral exemption of ships is a breach of the European Union’s legal obligations to uphold the Basel Convention and its Basel Ban Amendment. Independent environmental law experts [5] and the European Council Legal Services [6] have warned of the illegality of the new Regulation.
“Not only do the EU institutions create a legal dilemma for themselves, but also for all of the 27 European Member States that are Parties to the Basel Convention. All will have to reconcile the illegality of unilaterally acting in non-compliance with their international obligations“, said Patrizia Heidegger.
Source: NGO Shipbreaking Platform
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