EU Maritime Security

On 29 April 2004 the European regulation translating the maritime security provisions detailed in SOLAS into European law was published in the Official Journal.

As well as binding states to applying the SOLAS measures and the ISPS Code to international shipping by 01 July 2004, it provides for states to apply the provisions to domestic passenger ships by 01 July 2005 and to other sections of domestic shipping by 2007.

Article 3 defines sections of Part B which will be mandatory. On the whole these seem to fairly commonsense points which would give shipowners no particular cause for concern, although operators of EU flagged ships should perhaps take note of Para 4.28 on manning levels and 13.6 and 13.7 on frequency of of drills and exercises.

We applaud the decision to make mandatory Para 4.18 of Part B, dealing with the issuance of proper identification documents to Government officials entitled to board ships, and would hope that other contracting governments will do the same.

As per Article 6 member states will be obliged to request the information laid out in Paragraph 2.1 of Regulation XI-2/9 of SOLAS and ships will be obliged to provide the information 24 hours in advance. Member states may grant an exemption from this requirement to vessels operating scheduled services either between port facilities within the territory of a state, or within two or more Member states, provided that the Company concerned keeps a record of of the ships involved in such service and sends it to the competent authority of the ports concerned, and the information contained in Regulation XI-2/9 is kept for each voyage and made available on request.