Ships and vessels continue to pollute the EU maritime waters, according to a report published yesterday by the European Court of Auditors (ECA), the external auditor of the European Union (EU).
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,” said Nikolaos Milionis, the ECA Member responsible for the audit. “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.”
The auditors 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.
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,” they say.
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.
