'Costa Concordia': Italy's Casualty Report Still Overdue

The Board of Directors of the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) regret Italy has not submitted its findings to IMO.

ICS, representing all sectors and trades and over 80% of the world's merchant fleet recently met in London.

The issues that ICS members considered included: frustration with the failure of Italy to submit a full maritime casualty report to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) following the ‘Costa Concordia’ cruise ship tragedy which occurred over a year ago; the continuing discussions at IMO and elsewhere on the best means of achieving further carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reduction from ships; and serious concerns that the IMO Convention on Ship Recycling, adopted to improve standards throughout the world’s ship recycling yards, is in danger of being undermined by regional measures being discussed by the European Union. 

The ICS Board reviewed the continuing response at IMO to the ‘Costa Concordia’ cruise ship tragedy, and welcomed the measures that have so far been taken forward relating to passenger safety and evacuation procedures.

“The response of IMO so far has been measured and reasonable and we have been impressed by the commitment amongst governments to avoid knee jerk reactions” said ICS Chairman, Masamichi Morooka. “But IMO is under increasing pressure to take forward far more radical steps in advance of Italy publishing the complete results of its accident investigation, which it has still singularly failed to do.  Given the seriousness of the disaster, which happened over a year ago, this failure by Italy is simply unacceptable.  We still have no official understanding of what the underlying causes were with respect to an accident that really should never have happened.”

ICS believes that the ‘Costa Concordia’ tragedy has highlighted the seemingly inadequate obligations on the part of flag states to submit the results of accident investigations to IMO.  The impasse created by the failure of Italy to report definitively on such a serious casualty indicates that action may be needed in an area where other flag states are also commonly guilty with respect to less high profile incidents which are nevertheless serious and from which important safety lessons could be learned. ICS decided to take up this point  with IMO and the other relevant authorities