Ships and boats, despite the controls, continue to polluting the waters of the European Union. This is denounced by a European Court of Auditors' report published today which finds how, despite the fact that EU legislation shows improvements and is a times more stringent than international standards, its enforcement by the 22 coastal Member States of the Union and far from satisfactory. Actions aimed at preventing, address, monitor and sanction the various types of pollution caused by ships - the Court pointed out - are not up to the task.

In particular, the Court warns that there are also shortcomings that the EU still needs to be addressed, especially as regards the risks of pollution. For example, the report explains, it is still Shipowners may be able to circumvent the obligation to recycle materials of the ships by choosing a flag of a non-EU state before proceeding with the dismantling of the ship. A practice that was denounced by the European Commission which in the days has published a new evaluation of the European Regulation on ship recycling ( of 3 March 2025). The data - underlined the European Court of Auditors - speak for themselves: in 2022, one in seven ships in the world was flying flags of an EU state, but this figure fell by 50% for the fleet of ships at the end of their life cycle.

In addition, we found that EU rules on containers lost at sea are anything but watertight First of all, there is a guarantee that all losses are declared, not to mention the very limited number of containers that are recovered.

We also found that EU countries under-use such as a network of ships ready to intervene in oil spills or detection by drones, which the EU has equipped them with to help them fight pollution caused by ships. An example - specified the Court - is the European satellite surveillance system for oil slick detection (CleanSeaNet), which allows surveillance and early detection of possible cases of pollution. In the period 2022-2023, this system identified in total 7,731 possible spills in EU seas, mostly in Spain (1,462), Greece (1,367) and Italy (1,188). However, the Court found that less than half of the Member States have taken action of these reports, confirming pollution in only 7% of the cases, also due to the time elapsed between the acquisition of the satellite image and the effective control of pollution.

We also found that the authorities of the Member States Member States do not conduct sufficient preventive inspections of ships, and that the penalties for polluters remain mild. Those who illegally dump pollutants into the sea are rarely subject to effective or dissuasive penalties and criminal prosecution is Rare. Similarly, few Member States report breaches relating to the recovery of abandoned, lost or disused fishing gear. The audit found that the EU is struggling to monitor pollution from ships and the actual oil spills, contaminants and of marine litter from ships remains unknown, so just as the identity of the polluter is not known.

The Court therefore concluded that neither the European Commission nor do Member States fully monitor the use of the funds to combat the pollution of marine waters have an overview of the actual results obtained, nor the ways in which the latter could be replicated on a larger scale.

"Marine pollution caused by ships - said Nikolaos Milionis, ECA Member responsible for audit - continues to be a serious problem and, despite a series of improvements in recent years, EU action has not been really able to pull us out of bad waters. Really It is estimated that more than three quarters of Europe's seas have a pollution problem and, therefore, the ambitious goal of achieve zero pollution to protect the health of people, biodiversity and fish stocks are not still in sight".