Strasbourg/Brussels
-- The European Parliament has voted against the creation of the first-ever
ship recycling fund, a market-based incentive aimed at financing cleaner and
safer ship recycling worldwide. Members of the European Parliament by a clear
majority agreed to demand that such a financial mechanism be created by the
European Commission by 2015. NGO Shipbreaking Platform has condemned the result
of the voting and deems the decision responsible as it only delays the
unavoidable: Both the Commission and the Parliament having declared in the past
that a fund is urgently needed to solve the global shipbreaking crisis, without
ever delivering their promise.
“The idea of a fund has been
discussed for 15 years at the European level. Let’s face it: the Parliament
failed to uphold its own principles and to deliver as promised”, said Patrizia
Heidegger, Executive Director of the NGO Shipbreaking Platform. “Last year, one
European ship was sent to a substandard beaching yard in South Asia every day.
The EU needs to move now if it really wants to hold European shipowners
accountable.”
299
against 292
The fund (voted against by a
slight majority: 299 MEPs against; 292 for the fund) was envisioned to require
all shipowners calling at EU ports, regardless of their flag, to pay a fee into
a fund. The fund would finance proper ship recycling and hazardous waste
management in EU-vetted facilities only. It aimed at preventing ships from
reflagging outside of the EU, a common practice when ships are sold for
beaching. Whereas 40 percent of the world’s fleet is European-owned, only 17
percent fly an EU flag.
Too
weak without prevention of reflagging
Nevertheless, the NGO
Shipbreaking Platform can celebrate that the MEPs have voted in favour of more
stringent rules that will effectively ban beaching of EU-flagged ships. The
Platform has been campaigning for years so that the unsustainable practice of
beaching which is at the source of extreme pollution and human rights and
labour rights violations in developing countries, is a thing of the past.
However, a European ban on beaching without a funding mechanism to prevent
reflagging of ships out of the EU at end-of-life, remains far too weak. It is
expected that few ships will fall under the direct scope of the proposed
regulation at end-of-life.
Amendment
for green ship design
The Platform applauded Vittorio
Prodi for having introduced an amendment for green ship design, which
surprisingly was voted against by the Parliament, that would have minimised the
use of hazardous materials during shipbuilding, so as to remove hazardous
materials from modern fleets and to facilitate the best recycling practices at
end-of-life. This amendment, which had also been advocated by Sabine Wils would
have been widely welcomed as it envisaged a holistic solution for ships from
cradle to cradle.
Source:
recycling portal.
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