Image courtesy of NGO Shipbreaking Platform

The Environment Committee of the European Parliament (ENVI) has voted through plans to ‘create financial incentives to scrap ships safely’, including a recycling fund that will be financed by the shipping industry itself.

The vote, passed by a ‘very large majority’, forms part of a draft regulation to ‘clean up’ the practice of ship breaking and ‘ensure the materials are recycled in EU-approved facilities worldwide’. The new plans also include proposals to introduce penalties to EU ship owners who send their vessels to be broken on beaches in developing countries.

According to ENVI, the ship recycling fund falls in line with the ‘polluter pays’ principle and would make scrapping ships at EU facilities economically competitive.

Should the new regulation be passed, ship owners would have the choice of paying the levy on an annual or per visit basis. Ships would only be exempt from the levy should their owners have ‘deposited a financial guarantee to ensure that they use EU listed facilities’.

ENVI claims that the levy on port calls will make it impossible to evade the charges by ‘re-registering a ship outside the EU’ (‘reflagging’). They have warned that ship owners sending their vessels for recycling on a beach or in non-EU facilities within 12 months of their sale will incur penalties.

Furthermore, the draft regulation would require all ships entering the port of a EU Member State to have an inventory of hazardous materials. Penalties could be imposed should a ship's condition fail to correspond with its inventory.

Vice Chairman of ENVI and member of Greens and the European Free Alliance, Carl Schlyter, said: "[The] vote will hopefully put an end to EU ships being recklessly scrapped in developing countries.

“Currently, most EU ships are sent to South-East Asia at the end of their lives, where they are beached and their hazardous materials harm human health and the environment.

"MEPs have… voted by a very large majority to create financial incentives to scrap ships safely, including a recycling fund financed by the industry itself. This would steer ships that trade with the EU into proper ship recycling facilities. We hope that this will now be included in the final legislation.”

Parliament as a whole will vote at a forthcoming plenary session on a mandate for negotiations with EU ministers.

Campaigners urge Parliament to do more

The ENVI vote has been welcomed by environmental campaigners, including the NGO Shipbreaking Platform – a human and labour rights organisation promoting safe ship recycling – which dubbed the decision as ‘groundbreaking’.

The group has been calling on the European Commission (EC) to improve ship recycling regulations and introduce penalties for ship owners who currently exploit ‘legal loop holes’ to scrap ships outside the EU.

It has said that it expects the fund to ‘eliminate the price gap to substandard facilities located on beaches in non-OECD countries where ship owners currently obtain the highest prices for their end-of-life ships.’

Executive Director of the NGO, Patrizia Heidegger, said: “This EU regulation can be the first supra-national legally-binding rule which prohibits beaching.

“In the future, beaching must be replaced by safer methods in all countries, as has been agreed upon by the international community in the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Wastes and their Disposal.”

However, the NGO has also attacked ENVI’s decision to remove toxic ships from the EU Waste Shipment Regulation, a proposal which it notes would allow for ‘the export of end-of-life ships built with asbestos, heavy metals or PCBs to non-OECD countries.’

Heidegger has claimed that this move contradicts “Parliament’s own resolutions” and has urged members of the European Parliament to act to prevent this from happening.

She said: “Less than two weeks ago, the Parliament inked a resolution in plenary, calling for the end of the ‘illegal and unethical’ export of end-of-life ships containing asbestos to developing countries.

“We call on all members of the European Parliament to refuse to let the Basel regime lose its grasp on European toxic ships.”

Read more about ship recycling in Resource 70.