GMS, a large buyer of ships for recycling, has called on the European Commission to approve qualified Indian ship recycling facilities for inclusion on the European List under the EU Ship Recycling Regulation (EU SRR).

More than 110 Indian yards holding Hong Kong Convention (HKC) Statements of Compliance issued by IACS member classification societies. Over 35 formal applications submitted, and at least there were 10 Commission-led inspections and audits.

“Not a single Indian yard has been approved in more than a decade. This is not a failure of standards. It is not a failure of verification. It is a failure of political will,” the statement of GMS reads, adding that the EU continues to exclude the yards that handle most of the world’s recycling volume.

India has dismantled over 8,500 vessels across four decades, recovering more than 67 million tonnes of steel.

The Commission’s continued refusal to list Indian yards relies on the Basel Convention’s Ban Amendment, according to GMS, which restricts hazardous waste exports from OECD to non-OECD countries. GMS argues that this legal framework was drafted decades before India’s yards underwent their current transformation.

The Hong Kong Convention, negotiated at the International Maritime Organization to establish global ship recycling standards, entered into force on June 26, 2025. India ratified the Convention in 2019, several years ahead of most EU member states.

“Applying a blanket geographic exclusion regardless of actual yard compliance is not regulatory prudence. It is regulatory inertia,” GMS states.

GMS urges the European Commission to approve qualified Indian yards without further delay, recognize the Hong Kong Convention as the primary global ship recycling framework, and resolve the Basel-HKC regulatory conflict through facility-level assessments rather than geographic exclusion.

According to projections by BIMCO, approximately 15,000 vessels will require recycling by 2032.

“The current European List does not have the capacity to manage that volume,” the company states.  

Meanwhile, an estimated 15,000 direct jobs and more than 500,000 indirect livelihoods depend on India’s recycling ecosystem.