EU Updates List of Ship Recycling Facilities

European Commission adopted a new Decision amending Implementing Decision (EU) to update the European List of ship recycling facilities. The said decision has been published on Monday in the Official Journal of the EU.

With the 4th version of the list, the European Commission and the Member States add 6 new facilities to the list. These include, for the first time, 3 facilities which are located outside the EU -2 in Turkey and 1 in the United States-.

 The European Shipowners are fully supporting the expansion of the EU list, and in particular the inclusion of compliant facilities worldwide. From 31st December 2018, the EU Ship Recycling Regulation requires all large sea-going vessels sailing under an EU Member State flag to use an approved ship recycling facility included in the European List.

“However more work is on the table” says European Community Shipowners' Associations (ECSA)’s Secretary General, Mr Martin Dorsman. “Also in the past, European ships could go for recycling to other OECD States such as Turkey.

It means that so far not that much has changed in practice for the EU flagged fleet. This while the European Ship Recycling Regulation was already published back in 2013 and many of the 24 non-EU facilities have sent in their application more than 2 years ago.

“With the European regulation entering into force at the end of this month, this is hard for our industry to understand” he adds. “We therefore call on the EU Commission and Member States to step up and to include many more compliant non-EU ship recycling facilities, as our ships also operate on the global level”.

“We plea the EU legislators to become true facilitators for the upgrading of sub-standard ship recycling practices worldwide” says Martin Dorsman. Some EU flagged ships do not even enter European ports throughout their life-time, because they are too big or because they are trading elsewhere in the world, where there is a demand for a certain type of vessel and/or trade.

A successful regulation will have to provide for compliant facilities worldwide. Only then it may drive change on the ground and facilitate the entry into force of a global regime, the Hong Kong Convention.

“But we do acknowledge that in the past few months things are moving”. All the applications are being thoroughly reviewed and site inspections are finally being conducted, also in South Asia, to check their credentials. “The EU list is a living document and we look forward to see it being expanded even more in the very near future” Mr. Dorsman concludes.