Brussels, 9 December 2020
On the 9th of December, FEPORT Secretariat participated in the second meeting of the EMSWe Expert sub-group, which was organized through two separate morning and afternoon sessions taking place the same day.
The first part of the meeting dealt with the implementation of the Reporting Formalities Directive 2010/65/EU, which remains applicable until the EMSWe Regulation enters in full application by August 2025. The main part of the meeting consisted of updates and discussions regarding the progress of the data and interfaces thematic teams’ expert groups.
In the data thematic team expert group, a year of hard work on part of the Commission, Member States’ experts and trade associations, has resulted in very substantial progress and consensus on most of the dataset’s content.
The Commission should adopt the first Delegated Act establishing this dataset by 15 August 2025. When deciding on the DA’s content, the EMSWe Regulation prescribes that safety concerns should be taken into account, while at the same time, one of the main purposes of the EMSWe Regulation is to reduce administrative burdens.
That safety and reducing administrative complexity can be conflicting demands was again demonstrated during the meeting through discussions regarding the checklist for the safe loading and unloading of bulk carriers.
Some Member States argued in favour of the deletion of the checklist, as they deemed that the related exchange of information formed a purely B2B process and found that the checklist’s inclusion would lead to lower support for the European Maritime Single Window environment, both by Member States as well as business stakeholders.
Similar to previous meetings, FEPORT reiterated its support for the inclusion of the checklist due to its crucial role in ensuring the safety of port workers when they carry out loading and unloading activities on board of bulk ships. However, at the same time, we understand that other regulatory means to ensure the safety of port workers working on board of ships could be more suitable. Yet, this alternative solution should be proposed and implemented before the checklist is deleted.