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A shot across the EU bow

A shot across the EU bow
Are you motivated more by threats, or reason? Is a complex problem solved more effectively by a consensual agreement between the largest number of people, or by the prescriptive demands of a muscular minority imposing its will upon the rest?

This, in principle, sums up the difference between the way that the global shipping industry’s regulator, the IMO, works, compared to the way that the European Union exercises its powers, or “competences”. The difference is quite fundamental and demonstrates a growing gulf between what is a global technical organisation that has proved effective in reconciling differences and finding solutions to problems of marine safety, the improvement of the marine environment and latterly, marine security, and the EU.

The latter organisation, represented by the European Commission, believes that it should speak for all its member nations collectively in IMO discussions and that it can impose regional solutions to every problem. Unlike the IMO, which inevitably struggles with the pace of implementation of its conventions, the EU will back up its own directives and regulations with sanctions. Its strategies threaten the whole technical ethos of the IMO, by corralling its European members into a single bloc, constraining their ability to speak, if not think, for themselves.

Successive IMO secretary-generals have attempted to make the relations between IMO and the EU less confrontational, but while the language is invariably diplomatic, the institutions of the EU will not be deflected from their remorseless aggregation of power and the ingrained belief that regulatory might is right.

Against this background, the recent communications by the IMO’s secretary-general Kitack Lim, warning against the extension of the EU’s Emission Trading Scheme to ships, ought to be regarded as a shot across the European regulator’s bows. As always, the strategy of the EU has been prescriptive, backed up by threats. If IMO does not deliver the goods in the shape of a further global measure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by ships by 2021, regional rules will be imposed. Mr Lim, separately writing to the three EU presidents, points out that the EU’s proposals, which have been devised by the remorselessly green European Parliament’s Environment Committee, will seriously risk undermining all the work of the IMO to produce global solutions to these very complex problems.

Lim points out the real progress that is being made at IMO on emission reduction. He diplomatically did not note that while the European institutions have the facility to bully their 28 member nations into doing precisely what they require, in whatever timeframe they demand, the IMO has to consider the rather more complex needs of its member nations all across the globe and develop something that can be universally adopted.

While European solutions invariably minimise the problems, inferring that some brisk regulatory prescription will solve all problems, the IMO personnel do not underestimate the difficulties of devising a fair and globally acceptable emission reduction system. They know that if it is ever to be implemented, it must deal with newbuilding and existing ships, of many different types and with huge variations in operation, and in a manner that cannot menace world trade.

Will Lim’s intervention make any difference? In that he will be surely supported by the majority of the IMO membership, and most shipping organisations have already voiced their approval, one might hope that the EU might row back on their specific demands. But the EU, which seems to believe that it has a mission in life to hasten the IMO’s work by any means and is impatient of international consensus, is unlikely to back off. The shipping industry, which is not exactly in a state that enables it to embrace fresh environmental pressures with enthusiasm, meanwhile must hope for the best.