The amendments would impose a tax on merchant ships of all flags calling at EU ports to fund EU ship recycling facilities. The shipowner bodies say this would unfairly penalize one industrial sector to help another, and undermine the International Convention for Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships – adopted by IMO in 2009 – to improve working conditions in shipping yards globally and particularly in Asia.
“This is an unacceptable tax on trade,” said European Community Shipowners’ Association secretary general Alfons Guinier. “Shipping is a global industry operating under global rules. The European Parliament really shouldn’t be contemplating measures which will work against the aim to improve recycling conditions globally.”
“If the proposed amendments are taken forward, it will be seriously damaging to the Hong Kong Convention,” said International Chamber of Shipping secretary general, Peter Hinchliffe, adding that other measures beside the tax “will almost certainly mean that Asian nations will be unable to ratify the IMO Convention,’” thereby undoing efforts to achieve a “global solution that will actually work.”
“These astounding and incomprehensible proposals which are creating huge concern amongst industry and governments alike in Asia,” added Asian Shipowners Forum secretary general Yuichi Sonoda.
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