Reporting formalities for ships arriving in and/or departing from ports of the Member States
In accordance with the requirements of Directive 2010/65/EU, the Commission presents a report on reporting formalities for ships arriving in and/or departing from ports of the Member States (the Reporting Formalities Directive.) To recall, the purpose of the Directive is to simplify some of the procedures by establishing standard electronic transmission of information and by rationalising reporting formalities for ships arriving in and ships departing from EU ports, thus reducing the administrative burden for shipping companies. The main points of the report are as follows:
Implementation of the national single windows: the single window concept is the main requirement for the implementation of the Reporting Formalities Directive. All Member States have transposed the Directive and have taken initiatives regarding implementation of a national maritime single window. Whilst the final establishment of the National Single Windows is only due by June 2015, some observations can already be made based on the conclusions from the external consultant's report and following discussions with Member States and stakeholders in the framework of the Expert group on maritime simplification and electronic information services, established by the Commission (eMS group).
· Different public authorities and private stakeholders in various policy fields (amongst others maritime, customs, health and border control) are involved. Cooperation amongst them, both on EU and national level, is key and should be enhanced.
· Avoiding duplication of efforts: there is a tendency to build on existing platforms, technical solutions and standardization. However, when building on existing systems, the report stresses the need not to lose track of the requirements of the Directive and the need to ensure that they are met in a correct manner. Therefore, Member States should carefully assess their current systems, actively participate in the work of the eMS group and implement the functional and technical specifications in a correct manner and as discussed within the eMS group. They could also benefit from the work done in the Integrated Maritime Policy (IMP) demonstrator project and the Advanced National Networks for Administrations (AnNa) project. Both projects offer hands-on solutions for implementing national single windows.
· Lack of technical specifications developed at EU level: functional and technical specifications need to be further developed as soon as possible. In that respect, the development of the eManifest, being the bulk of the volume to be lodged into the single window, is an important factor. Member States are waiting to finalise the ICT implementation of the national single window until there is a clear view on the eManifest data set.
Supporting projects:
IMP demonstrator project: the purpose of the demonstrator project is the development of software and service components that would be used to support the participating Member States (Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Malta and Romania) and Norway in implementing their national single window solution in compliance with the Reporting Formalities Directive. A first version of the prototype, offering the possibility of fulfilling the reporting formalities through a harmonised interface, was tested in the course of 2013. A second version allowing information exchange with SafeSeaNet was made available beginning 2014. The final phase of the project will run until November 2014.
AnNa project: this project, selected under the TEN-T Motorways of the Sea 2012 multiannual call with a budget of EUR 37 076 000 and running from 2012 to 2015, aims at supporting the effective development of national single windows in line with the Directive (e.g. by supporting ICT based system integration in the maritime single window developments). Functional and technical requirements are developed as well as an interim master plan for the minimum requirements of the Directive
With regards to the other reporting requirements the following conclusions could be drawn:
· there is no detailed information available on the extent of the traffic/movement of ships from one EU port to another, or of ships calling intermediately at third country ports or entering free zones. There are, however, possibilities of gathering more information in the future. The Commission will see if these could help to improve the quality and availability of statistics;
· the optimal use of shipping should be stimulated by further simplifying formalities for ships that have called at a port in a third country or free zone. As a next step, the Commission should look into further simplification measures by e.g. adding other (customs) functionalities to the eManifest;
· the Commission will consider extending the simplification envisaged by the Reporting Formalities Directive to inland waterway transport and to match River Information Services (RIS) with the SafeSeaNet system, under certain conditions.
Future outlook: the paper goes on to look at measures that would lead to further simplification including: (i) extending the scope of the Directive to cover additional formalities, e.g. port State control notifications; (ii) a monitoring methodology for the implementation of the national single windows; (iii) reviewing Article 9 exempting vessels involved in intra-EU shipping of some reporting obligations, as Member States claimed that some reporting may still be needed; (iv) further harmonising the time-limits for reporting obligations in the various legal acts of the Union covered by the Reporting Formalities Directive.
Lastly, the Commission discusses the possibility of adopting binding legal specifications, perhaps building on the Interface and Functionalities Control Document (IFCD) in Directive 2002/59/EC, to regulate some functionality.