The "Erika III" package, aimed at protecting Europe's coasts from maritime disasters and improving passenger and crew safety, was adopted by the European Parliament on March 11th 2009. The eight regulations and directives will tighten safety requirements for ships flying an EU Member State flag or navigating in European waters and thus help prevent disasters such as the Erika and Prestige shipwrecks from spoiling European coasts.

Three years later its proposal, with the adoption of the eight measures proposed in the third maritime safety package, an important step has been achieved both on the improvement of the effectiveness of existing measures to prevent accidents and on the management of their consequences if the worse were to happen.

An ambitious approach at Council leading to agreement on the third maritime safety package, combined with the broad support from the European Parliament across the inter-institutional process in order to preserve the key measures of the package proposed by the Commission, clearly contributed to this success.

Main measures included in Erika III Package

• Permanent blacklisting of dangerous ships and tougher and more frequent inspections
• Stricter insurance requirements for ship-owners and better compensation to passengers in the event of accidents
• Mandatory compliance with international safety standards for ships flying a Member State flag
• An independent authority to be set up in each Member State with the power to launch rescue operations and decide where to take ships in distress

In the first place, a new Directive has been adopted on the improvement in quality of European flags. The lack of regulation concerning the responsibilities of the flag State clearly represented a "missing link" in European legislation so far. As a major maritime power accounting for 25% of the world fleet, the European Union has to guarantee that all Member States effectively verify that international standards are upheld by ships sailing under their flag. This includes a mandatory audit plan of national maritime administrations and the certification of their quality management systems, as opposed to the international scheme which is implemented on a voluntary basis only. The Flag State Directive will not only strengthen the application of international rules of maritime safety, making them enforceable and ensuring a level playing field across the European Union but also improve the image of the European fleet and make it more attractive to professionals.

Moreover, the Member States declared their firm commitment to become bound by the main international maritime safety conventions and to apply the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Flag State Code.

Besides, it is also of fundamental importance to reinforce the inspection of the ships that call at European ports. With the adoption of the new Directive, further step has been taken towards improving the effectiveness and quality of the visits and inspections carried out by the port State in European ports, while concentrating on the more dubious ships and alleviating the pressure on the high quality ships. This means to undertake a thorough reform of the port State control system, by requiring an inspection of all ships making a stopover in European ports. The current obligation for each Member State to inspect 25% of the ships calling its ports is replaced by an objective of 100% for the Community as a whole.

As regards the monitoring of ships in European waters, the new text aims to guarantee that all the Member States will be interconnected via SafeSeaNet, which is a data exchange platform between the national maritime administrations, in order to obtain a complete overview of the movements of dangerous or polluting cargos on ships sailing in European waters. It was also agreed to establish a European Union Long Range Identification and Tracking Data Centre in charge of processing the long-range identification and tracking information of ships. Finally, it is foreseen that a system of automatic identification be extended to fishing vessels over 15 meters , in order to reduce the risk of collisions at sea.

The objective of the new Directive on accident investigations is to set up a common European Union framework in order to guarantee the effectiveness, objectivity and transparency of enquiries following maritime accidents occurring in EU waters as well as involving EU flag ships or EU interests. This concerns the harmonisation of technical enquiry procedures, which will be carried out according to a common methodology, in accordance with the IMO Code for the Investigation of Marine Casualties and Incidents.

The legislative texts on classification societies (a Directive and a Regulation) seek to achieve a radical improvement in the quality of the work undertaken by classification societies. In fact, these bodies represent a fundamental element of the maritime safety chain: better performing class means less room for sub-standard shipping at no additional cost for safety-conscious owners.

Finally, two measures in this third package aim to protect the victims of marine casualties. A new Regulation has been adopted to further protect passengers in the aftermath of an accident, introducing a set of modern rules on liability and insurance which will benefit passengers travelling on the main European and domestic maritime routes. The adoption of a new Directive on the insurance of shipowners for maritime claims represents a major step in order to fix a minimum set of rules, as regards insurance of ship owners. It requires that all ships flying the flag of a Member State (throughout the world) and all ships entering a maritime area under the jurisdiction of a Member State have insurance cover.

EU Maritime Safety, a major issue for the European Union

Maritime safety has long been a priority of the European Parliament, which in 2002 set up a temporary committee on improving safety at sea following the Erika and Prestige oil-spills of 1999 and 2002 respectively. Focusing the importance of such issue, EU funded projects such as Spreex intended to assemble existing experience from oil spill response, in order to improve preparednes and reaction. Under the previous two packages of maritime safety legislation (known as Erika I and Erika II), the EU adopted important maritime safety and security laws providing among other things for ship inspections in port, a ban on single-hull vessels to transport oil and the creation of the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA).
 
The Commission put forward the Erika III package in November 2005. All through the legislative process, Parliament defended the highest safety standards possible for the maritime environment, coastal areas, and ship passengers and crew.  After three years of protracted negotiations with national transport ministers, MEPs secured an agreement last December during a conciliation meeting with Council representatives.