This documents presents the report from the Commission on experience acquired in the work carried out pursuant to Council Directive 95/64/EC on statistical returns in respect of carriage of goods and passengers by sea.
On 8 December 1995, the Council adopted a Directive on statistical returns in respect of carriage of goods and passengers by sea. The Directive 95/64/EC establishes a harmonised framework for the collection of maritime statistics across the European Economic Area. It defines the information to be periodically transmitted from each Member State to the Statistica Office of the European Communities, for the carriage of goods and passengers by sea.
Article 8 of the Council Directive stipulates that the Commission shall submit a report to the Council on experience acquired in the work carreid out pursuant to this Directive after data have been collected over a period of three years. Data collection started with reference year 1997.
The experiences from the implementation of the maritime Directive have in general been positive. Setting up the reporting system in thirteen EU Member States concerned, with a total of almost 1100 statistical ports, involved in resources and efforts at all levels: the ports, the competent national authorities and the Commission.
The Three-year transitional period turned out to be appropriate to the needs for adaptation. By January 2000, the majority of Member States had adopted the necessary legal and administrative measures and were ready for producing the required statistical returns. As at November 2000, the Commission has received the majority of data required by the Directive for the first three reference years. However, the collected information is incomplete as far as three Member States with importatn maritime transport are concerned. This has a negative impact on building EU totals and on dissemination of the data in general. The timeliness of data transmission still needs to be improved for guaranteeing a reliable and in-time dissemination of maritime data. Technically, the transmission of data to the Commission was continuously improved during the first three years, thanks to electronic transmission tools.
Given the provisional threshold for detailed reporting duty and the derogations granted during the transitional period, complete and comparable data on transport by passengers and cargo by sea will be available only from reference year 2000 onwards.
In a few countries there are still problems with non-response of data providers.
Compared with the time before the Directive, when only some of the Members States provided some general data on a voluntary and non-harmonised basis, the Directive constitutes an enormous advantage: for the first time, there will be regular information on maritime transport in the EU/EEA on the basis of harmonised definitions and classifications, and with a broad coveragee of ports and indicators.
So far, the procedures foreseen in the Directive for laying down its impelmenting rules and for adapting it to economic developments have proven satisfactory. No changes in the text of the Directive are sought in the short term. In the mediumterm however, the pilot studies carried out pursuant to this Directive may lead to a need for changes. This will be explored once that more experience is gained with collecting variables of the current system. �