BIMCO wants EU coastal states more active with shipping improvements

BIMCO wants EU coastal states more active with shipping improvements An international shipowners organization wants the European Union to encourage its coastal state members to become more involved in the environmental, safety and quality of life aspects of ocean shipping.
   'We see it as the missing link in the otherwise substantial improvement in the quality of shipping that we have experienced over the last 10 years,' Anders Arfelt, BIMCO's manager of security and international affairs, told a European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) study group in Brussels Tuesday.
   BIMCO, the world's largest private shipping association, represents shipowners from all segments of ocean shipping and who collectively control two-thirds of the world's fleet, as well as other maritime interests, such as port agents, brokers, underwriters and classification societies.
   BIMCO supports efforts by the International Maritime Organization to ensure that coastal states provide waste reception facilities for vessels and fair treatment to seafarers, and plans to submit detailed comments to the EU's Maritime Policy Task Force.
   BIMCO has proposed a Quality Coastal State program. Arfelt outlined the program’s highlights, including:
   * Fulfillment of the EU's international duties and obligations by ratifying, implementing and enforcing internationally agreed conventions, such as the IMO's MARPOL Annex V with regards to reception facilities.
   * Implementing the IMO guidelines such as the IMO/International Labor Organization guidelines on the fair treatment of seafarers.
   * Providing adequate waste reception facilities and arrangements to protect the local marine environment and resources.
   * Maintaining aids to navigation and nautical charts, and providing vessel traffic services, where appropriate.
   * Providing ships in distress with a place of refuge rather than risking environmental disaster by denying it.
   * Ensuring that all steps are taken to facilitate the safe innocent passage of ships through its waters.
   * Giving incentives to quality ships calling at its ports or navigating within its waters.
   Arfelt called on the EU to include the Quality Coastal States program in its future maritime policy. 'The EU could contribute significantly to the safe and environmentally friendly maritime transport chain by helping member states become Quality Coastal States, and by measuring and benchmarking their progress,' he said.
   'Such a criteria could become the yardstick by which all the actions of all coastal states are measured, and could become a leading light for global maritime policy making,' Arfelt said.
   BIMCO hopes that the Quality Coastal State concept will eventually be applied on a global scale, and sees potential for related IMO activity towards this end.