The DG Move has published a study on the impact on determined marine safety from the certificates of exemption from the pilotage



The Mobilità head office and Trasporti of the EU commission has published today a study on the impact on marine safety deriving from the concession of the certificates of exemption from the pilotage in some European harbour ports of call that is elaborated by Pwc in collaboration with Panteia on behalf of the EU commission in sight of an investigation on-line on the impact of such certificates that the same EU commission will start in the next weeks, to which will follow at the beginning of a 2013 advisory reunion with the interested parts.

The next investigation of the Commission falls back in the picture of the located actions in existence from Brussels in order to define a clear and homogenous picture for the release of the certificates of exemption from the pilotage in the European ports. The EU commission has evidenced in fact that the pilotage services can mainly create problems to the ships that operate on routes breviums and that they regularly call in the same ports, in many of which the assistance of a local pilot is tax from the law. Some European nations - it has remembered the Commission - offer a Pilotage Exemption Certificate (PEC), while others impose the observance of requirement that return the release of such certificate of exemption from the pilotage difficult. Objective of the Commission is to induce the States EU to institute rules that facilitate the release of the exemptions from the pilotage becoming simpler the enforced norms and allowing with all the operators whom they carry out you attend services of marine transport to ask and to obtain the PEC with greater facility.

The issue of the technical-nautical services, included the pilotage, and of their rates recently is reproposed in Italy from the Harbour Authority of Venice that contests to the fact that marine safety obligation to supply these services in monopoly regime. The "Study on Pilotage Exemption published Certificates" today from the DG Move anticipates an analysis of the modalities with which the services of pilotage in the nations of the EU are supplied and illustrates the results of an investigation on the impact of the PEC on marine safety lead in order to find the opinion of the stakeholder. From the investigation it turns out that the pilotage has a certain connection with safety and that safety is adduced as motivation from which they are contrary to the concession of exemptions from the pilotage. The study evidences that, to the demand to define if has been positive, neutral or negative the impact of the PEC on safety, the participants to the survey have answered in anything but univocal way: on one side beyond 60% of the pilots it considers that the exemption certificates have an impact negative on the safety, 23% of the pilots consider that the impact is positive and 15% that does not have some consequence on safety, from the other 59% of the Harbour Authorities and the institutions and enterprises that manage ports deem that the PEC do not have some impact on safety, while less of 25% currency that the certificates have an impact negative.

The study finds moreover that, if the national authorities consider that important variations of the level of marine safety with the concession of the PEC do not happen, however, taking in consideration the various European geographic areas, the national authorities of the Mediterranean area turn out more reluctant to grant the certificates of exemption from the pilotage because they consider that they have an impact negative on safety of navigation.

By the navigation companies a more positive appraisal of the impact of the PEC on safety, as is expressed they have evidenced as the exemption certificates are only granted when the commanders of the ships have acquired a determined level of experience and that, therefore, the possibility that they are involved in incidents is much lowland.

The Harbour Authorities, the commanders of the ports and the pilots who have participated to the survey, have emphasized as the great part of the relative issues to safety is tied to communication problems, as for example to a insufficient acquaintance of the language that it provokes misunderstood, to a limited experience and understanding of the local and environmental specificities and to other factors as for example economic pressures that could induce the commanders of the ships to compromise safety. On the whole, but, if the majority of the ports does not catch a glimpse some disadvantage deriving from the concession of the PEC, the pilots are almost unanimous in opposing themselves to they which extended application more.

Commenting the content of the study, the general secretary of the European Sea Ports Organisation (ESPO), Patrick Verhoeven, it has found that a series of useful information, but has emphasized that, since anticipates a common picture of the EU for the concession of the PEC can be useful to the aim to avoid accidental decisions and to guarantee parity of conditions, the study would have had to be focused on the general principles rather than on supplying detailed prescrittive measures.