Yesterday, negotiators from the European Parliament and the Council of the EU reached a provisional agreement on the legislative acts of the Maritime safety package amending the Directives 2009 European Conventions on compliance with flag State requirements and Port State Control activities. With regard to the flag State requirements, the update of the legislation in force has the main objective of aligning it with the International Maritime Organization (IMO) standards, as well as to ensure proper inspections of ships, to monitor and supervise organisations operating on behalf of states to ensure a wider uptake of the digital technologies and to record and measure the performance of fleets and the tasks of flag states. The agreement limits the scope of Application of the Directive to ships operating voyages International. In addition, the European Commission is entrusted with the the task of creating a database of ship information for the purposes of issuance and verification of electronic certificates. A digital portal will allow inspectors to consult directly the information contained in the databases National.

On the Port State Activities Directive Control, the update of the standard aims to align it with the standards and International Procedures Set Out in the Memorandum of Understanding Paris MoU and IMO Conventions. The changes introduced by the agreement are intended to ensure clarity and Consistency with international standards and procedures: for the profile risk of the vessel, which is determined by a combination of generic, historical and environmental risk parameters, the will have a significant impact without having a significant impact on the disproportionate to the overall balance of the different parameters; the Quality Management System (QMS) for port State administrations will be limited to inspection-related parts of the administration and Member States will have five years to introduce the QMS to align the as possible to the usual audit cycle for the port state administrations.

The provisional agreement will now be presented to the Member States' representatives in the Council (Coreper) and to the Parliamentary Committee on Transport and Tourism (TRAN). If approved, the text will then have to be formally adopted by both co-legislators before it can be published on the "Official Journal" of the EU and enter into force. The formal adoption of legislative acts is provided for in autumn. Member States will have 30 months from entry into force updated directives to transpose their provisions into the national legislation.