European Commission publishes Ports and Industrial Maritime Strategies

In early March, the European Commission published two important policy initiatives: a strategy on Ports and another one on the industrial maritime value chain.^[1]

The EU Ports Strategy^[2] focuses on increasing the competitiveness of EU ports, empowering them for the energy transition, supporting them in decarbonisation, making them secure and resilient, while ensuring sufficient financial support. The strategy proposes a few flagship actions to reach those objectives. When it comes to security aspects in ports, in particular drug trafficking, the European Commission announces in the strategy that it “will propose an EU framework for background checks for port workers”. Furthermore, public-private information exchange between customs and maritime logistics companies on drug trafficking and illicit trade are encouraged.  The Strategy also recalls the EU’s Port State Control Directive, which provides for a system of targeted compliance spot checks of vessels calling to EU ports. On Port State Control, an important development also took place at international level: the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) reports about an updated data-exchange agreement with the Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control (Paris MoU). This is supposed to “support harmonization of PSC activities worldwide and improve compliance monitoring by port States”, according to the IMO press release^[3].

Alongside the Ports Strategy, the European Commission also published an EU Industrial Maritime Strategy^[4]. The overall stated aim of this strategy is to “boost jobs, innovation and the EU’s global leadership in shipbuilding and shipping”. The strategy consists of three topical pillars and three horizontal priorities of relevance to all pillars. The topical pillars are (1) Build, equip and repair, (2) Transport and connect, (3) Secure and protect. The horizontal priorities are (1) Innovation, (2) Finance and investment, and (3) Skills and quality jobs. Regarding the content, the strategy among others includes wording on cyber-security, nuclear propulsion, mutual recognition, marine equipment and the EU’s work in IMO on GHG as well as the future of the EU ETS when it comes to shipping.

The strategies are not legally binding, but they provide a comprehensive overview of the European Commission’s view of the maritime and ports ecosystem in the EU and announce legislative priorities for the coming years.

[1] See European Commission press release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_484

[2] https://transport.ec.europa.eu/document/download/8a1a9516-8efd-44ca-b308-4b3cafc59f38_en?filename=communication_on_EU_ports_strategy.pdf

[3] https://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/pages/whatsnew-2433.aspx?utm_source=chatgpt.com

[4] https://transport.ec.europa.eu/document/download/2cda36ec-b5fc-4cc9-9091-a8014ba8177e_en?filename=communication_on_EU_industrial_maritime_strategy_3.pdf