ICS Advocates IMO Primacy Over EU on Shipping & CO2 Issues

The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) – the worldwide trade association for shipowners says it has made an important written submission to the United Nations International Maritime Organization (IMO) suggesting a possible way forward with respect to complex discussions about additional global regulations to further reduce CO2 emissions from merchant ships.


In particular, ICS wishes to ensure the primacy of a global IMO framework for addressing the reduction of shipping’s CO2 emissions in the face of proposals by the European Commission for unilateral regional regulations that will apply to international shipping trading to the EU.


ICS’s main objection to the draft EU Regulation (as currently proposed by the European Commission) is not so much with the objective as with the timing and the level of detail which it contains.  If the EU measures on monitoring and reporting ships’ CO2 emissions are adopted in advance of IMO developing its own global measure, it may be impossible to have a global regime that will be compatible with the EU approach.  “Unless the EU expects the rest of the world to follow its unilateral approach to the letter?” said Mr Hinchliffe.



In what is described as a carefully worded ‘political’ paper, ICS has suggested that IMO Member States should initially focus on developing regulations for the mandatory reporting of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by internationally trading ships, deferring further discussions on how the information collected might subsequently be used to develop additional efficiency measures.



ICS hopes that if governments can agree to approach their work in distinct stages, IMO Member States can proceed towards the early adoption of mandatory CO2 monitoring and reporting measures that would be enforced worldwide.