The European Commission has proposed an amendment to Annex I of the Vessel Traffic Monitoring Directive (2002/59/EC) requiring all ships, including those simply transiting EU waters without entering an EU port, to prove that they are insured.
According to a Commission statement, ‘this amendment strengthens the monitoring of uninsured or unsafe ships, supports security and environmental objectives and aligns EU rules with global standards in a context of increasing threats from dangerous cargoes and geopolitical instability’.
The number of ships affected by EU sanctions exceeded 1,000 at the end of last year and data from S&P Global Market Intelligence shows that more than 800 of them lacked confirmed insurance. In addition, the average age of sanctioned ships (21 years) is about eight years older than the world average, raising fears that they could cause environmental disasters.
This measure is in addition to others adopted by various European countries in an attempt to control the so-called Russian ‘ghost fleet’ vessels.
Since February, the Danish Maritime Authority has been carrying out port state controls of oil tankers it considers high-risk anchoring off Skagen in the far north of the country, a popular anchorage.
Also this year, the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) activated an advanced UK-led response system to track potential threats to undersea infrastructure and monitor “ghost fleet” vessels. The JEF is a UK-led European multinational military partnership. In the same vein, the naval operation called Nordic Warden leverages AI to assess data from a variety of sources, including the Automatic Identification System (AIS) that ships use to transmit their position, in order to calculate the risk posed by individual vessels entering areas of interest.
In early April, Estonian authorities detained an 18-year-old tanker for flying a false flag, the first time a Baltic coastal state had taken such action against the “ghost fleet”.
News and image obtained: "Asociación de Navieros Españoles"
