EMEA News
Poor Enforcement Risks Rewarding Cheats, Says Environmental Group
Poor enforcement of Emission Control Area (ECA) rules could risk rewarding cheats, Sotiris Raptis, policy officer for clean shipping at sustainable transport group Transport & Environment (T&E), has told Ship & Bunker.
Raptis said that although enforcement was urgently needed, some European Union (EU) member states had yet to "properly" implement the new 0.10 percent sulfur limits through effective enforcement measures such as meaningful, dissuasive financial penalties to encourage operators to comply with the new rules.
"Since the financial gains from non compliance can be extremely high – many tens of thousands of euros on a single voyage – a failure to properly enforce the low sulfur rules risks distorting the principle of a level playing field and undermining legal certainty in Europe," he said.
"Non or poor enforcement risks rewarding cheats and penalizes proaction, innovation and observance of the law."
"In this context, detention of ships which violate the rules, if legal, could be an immediate solution to an urgent situation."
A previous presentation by a senior adviser to the Danish Ecological Council had suggested that ships caught in violation of sulfur limits be taken to the nearest port and fined 15 days.
Earlier this month, Jack Jordan, a marine fuel reporter with Argus Media, predicted that deliberate non-compliance in European ECAs could potentially save ships $20,000 per day in fuel costs.
