Ships are continuing to pollute the seas around Europe because member states’ enforcement is “far from satisfactory”, that’s according to the European Court of Auditors (ECA).
The ECA says European law is often stricter compared to other parts of the world when it comes oil pollution, shipwrecks, and sulphur emissions, but the rules are not being fully enforced.
European Maritime Safety Agency’s CleanSeaNet service uses European satellites and drones to monitor for possible oil spills.
In 2023, CleanSeaNet identified 140 possible spills off the Irish coast, but only one-fifth of them were followed up by the authorities in Ireland.
Pollution was confirmed in on 2 percent of Irish cases.
Europe wide, CleanSeaNet sent out alerts for 5,088 possible spills in 2023. Half of them were checked by member states and pollution was confirmed in just 7 percent of cases, the ECA says.
Whilst the European Court of Auditors acknowledges that there are weaknesses with CleanSeaNet ability to correctly identify pollution, it says member states should nonetheless be following through with checks.
“Member states are responsible for on-site checks and enforcement.”
Ireland was not the worst performer. Latvia carried out no checks at all on the 44 possible spills identified by CleanSeaNet.
At the other end of the spectrum, Italy and Germany received more than 1,300 alerts and carried out checks on nearly all of them.
But whereas Germany confirmed that pollution had occured in around one-third of cases, Italian authorities said that only 3 percent of the alerts were actual spills.
“We found that the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) provided member states with useful tools to tackle ship-source pollution, but they were not used to their full potential. CleanSeaNet uses advanced satellite technology to detect possible oil spills, but it lacks similar capabilities for other pollutants.”
The European Commission said member states have a “dedicated EU hub” which combines data from a number of sources, not just CleanSeaNet. This should give authorities the support they need in “detecting and tackling ship-source pollution”.
The European Court of Auditors recommends that the EU “improve the functioning and effectiveness of EMSA pollution alert tools.”
“Pollution at sea caused by ships remains a major problem, and despite a number of improvements in recent years, EU action is not really able to steer us out of troubled waters”, said ECA auditor, Nikolaos Milionis.
“In fact, with over three-quarters of European seas estimated to have a pollution problem, the zero-pollution ambition to protect people’s health, biodiversity and fish stocks is still not within sight.”
The European Commission says by the end of 2027 it will be obligatory for member states to report back on CleanSeaNet and it will have a clearer picture of the situation once this happens. Although it admitted this will not be until the end of June 2028.
“The European Green Deal reaffirms the Commission’s ambition to protect its population from
environment-related risks…additional efforts and methods are required to tackle sea water
pollution by ships.”