The Council published in the Official Journal of the European Union, on July 29th, its common position on the draft Regulation on common rules and standards for ship inspection and survey organisations. This Regulation is part of the recast of the Council Directive 94/57/EC, which will include a new Directive and a new Regulation.

In the framework of the codecision procedure, the Council reached, on November 30th 2007, a political agreement on two separate legal instruments based on the related Commission proposal, a draft Directive on common rules and standards for ship inspection and survey organisations and for the relevant activities of maritime administrations, and a Regulation on common rules and standards for ship inspection and survey organisations.

The proposal of the Commission aims at recasting successive amendments to Directive 94/57/EC establishing common rules and standards for organisations that inspect ships and issue ships' certificates, the so-called "recognised organisations". Furthermore, certain provisions of the existing Directive are amended with a view to simplification or harmonisation or in order to reinforce the current rules, e.g. by strengthening the control of recognised organisations and by reforming the system of penalties against those that do not fulfil the minimum recognition criteria.

Apart from the decision to include all provisions related to the Community recognition of ship inspection and survey organisations in a new Regulation, the Council considered appropriate to modify these provisions for reasons of clarity or based on the following considerations:

• Scope of recognition and minimum recognition criteria.
• Imposition of fines against recognised organisations.
• Harmonisation of rules and procedures of recognised organisations and mutual recognition of certificates issued
• by them.
• Assessment and certification of the quality management systems of recognised organisations.
• Introduction of the regulatory procedure with scrutiny.

The common position incorporates a large number of the European Parliament's first-reading amendments, either in full-text, or partly, or following them in principle. The remaining amendments could not be accepted because, in the Council's view, they are not consistent with the procedures of Community recognition, not entirely clear or seem to be redundant or are not consistent with the Council's approach to the setting up of the entity responsible for the assessment and certification of the quality management systems of recognised organisations.

The Draft Regulation

This Regulation will establish the measures to be followed by organisations entrusted with the inspection, survey and certification of ships for compliance with the international conventions on safety at sea and prevention of marine pollution, while furthering the objective of freedom to provide services. This includes the development and implementation of safety requirements for hull, machinery and electrical and control installations of ships falling under the scope of the international conventions.

Ship inspection and survey organisations should be able to offer their services throughout the Community and compete with each other while providing equal levels of safety and of environmental protection. The necessary professional standards for their activities should therefore be uniformly established and applied across the Community.

This objective should be pursued through measures that adequately tie in with the work of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and, where appropriate, build on and complement it. Furthermore, the Member States and the Commission should promote the development by the IMO of an international code for recognised organisations.

This draft Regulation therefore aims to establish the common procedures to grant authorisation to organisation, the obligation to submit those applications by Member States to the Commission, the conditions for the Commission's withdrawal of this authorisation, situations where the Commission can impose fines in the minimum requirements are not met.

The draft Regulation also establishes the obligation for the Commission to draw up and regularly update a list of the organisations recognised, and to publish that in the Official Journal of the European Union.