The European Maritime Safety Agency : Its Origin and its Tasks

The European Maritime Safety Agency, created in the aftermath of the Erika disaster, will contribute to the enhancement of the overall maritime safety system in the Community. Its goals are, through its tasks, to reduce the risk of maritime accidents, marine pollution from ships and the loss of human lives at sea.

In general terms, the Agency will provide technical and scientific advice to the Commission in the field of maritime safety and prevention of pollution by ships in the continuous process of updating and developing new legislation, monitoring its implementation and evaluating the effectiveness of the measures in place. Agency officials will closely cooperate with Member States maritime services.

Some of the key areas where the Agency will be active are: strengthening of the Port State Control regime; auditing of the Community-recognised classification societies; development of a common methodology for the investigation of maritime accidents and; the establishment of a Community vessel traffic monitoring and information system.

The Agency will work very closely with Member States. It will respond to their specific requests in relation to the practical implementation of Community legislation, such as the recently adopted directive on traffic monitoring, and may organise appropriate training activities. The Agency will facilitate co-operation between the Member States and disseminate best practices in the Community. The Agency will also play a positive role in the process of European Union enlargement, by assisting the accession countries in the implementation of Community legislation on maritime safety and the prevention of pollution by ships.

The Agency will contribute to the process of evaluating the effectiveness of Community legislation by providing the Commission and the Member states with objective, reliable and comparable information and data on maritime safety and on ship pollution. Following major shipping disasters in European waters, such as the sinking of the ferry Estonia and the tankers Erika and Prestige, very substantial packages of EU legislation have been adopted to improve maritime safety and to reduce pollution from ships. An overview of the most important directives and regulations is presented in this website.

To ensure a proper, harmonised and effective implementation of this vast package of legislation, an ongoing process of dialogue and cooperation is necessary between all the parties concerned. In summary, the main task of EMSA is to organise and structure this dialogue between 27 European States and the European Commission.

 Watch the EMSA presentation video: Safer Shipping Cleaner Seas