The purpose of the Directive 2005/35/EC is to incorporate international standards for ship-source pollution into Community law and to ensure that persons responsible for discharges are subject to adequate penalties as referred to in Article 8, in order to improve maritime safety and to enhance protection of the marine environment from pollution by ships.
The directive also defines a common framework for how Member States to deal with penalties, including criminal sanctions, for illegal discharges from ships. Responsible persons for discharges of polluting substances are subject to effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties, which may include criminal or administrative penalties.
On 19 May 2021, the European Commission published a combined ‘Evaluation and Inception impact assessment roadmap’ on the revision of Directive 2005/35/EC with the aim to evaluate the existing situation and to analyse the possibility to propose a revision of the Directive. Based on the legislative proposal was presented by the European Commission on 1 June 2023 and the Economic and Social Committee published its opinion on 20 September 2023. The TRAN Committee adopted its report on 17 November 2023. The report proposes the following additions and modifications to the Commission proposal: 
-Ensuring that all parties, including the maritime transport sector, national administrations and civil society, have easy access to the text of reference for this directive at the date of an infringement: when applying the provisions of this directive and the corresponding national laws, MARPOL 73/78 and its annexes as referred to in this directive in force at the date of infringement must be considered.
-Clarifying the level of penalties: it should be stated more clearly than in the Commission proposal that the level of administrative penalties should not be fixed at such low levels that these penalties’ dissuasive, effective and proportionate character is undermined. Maximum limits for administrative penalties as low as €10 000 for legal persons, such as shipping companies, or minimum limits starting at only €10 for natural persons and €32 for legal persons (as indicated for some Member States in the accompanying impact assessment) seem to be far too low for penalising illicit behaviour or even dissuading it.
-Clarifying and increasing the level of verification: Member States should thoroughly analyse all the alerts that they receive from CleanSeaNet. They should then perform a higher percentage of on-the spot verification than foreseen in the Commission proposal.
-Ensuring that all interested parties have easy access to the full and updated texts of IMO conventions, which is currently not the case.
In the Council, the Working Party on Shipping first discussed the proposal on 14 June 2023. The Council agreed its position general approach on 4 December 2023. The Council intends to introduce a number of changes to ensure clarity and coherence with international rules and procedures, in particular those of the international convention for the prevention of pollution from ships (MARPOL).
Source: www.europarl.europa.eu
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