The European Parliament approved the Commission's proposal subject to 18 amendments seeking to:
- extend inspections to the crew's living and working conditions,
- make provision for an exchange of information on the techniques implemented by the Member States in order to monitor agencies which have carried out too few inspections,
- ensure that Member States provide the authorities responsible for carrying out inspections with the equipment and staff needed in order to perform the duties for which provision is made in the directive,
- extend the scope of inspections to ships entering the port of a Member State and to ships cruising in the territorial waters of the Member States,
- extend the recognition of provisional certificates of inspections carried out in other Member States party to the memorandum,
- abolish the powers granted to the Commission to decide on the procedure for detailed inspections,
- allow the authority of one of the Member States affected to carry out enhanced controls on passengers ships providing regular services between Member States,
- increase the information provided by the competent authority to the master of a ship subject to inspection,
- strengthen information instruments available to the authorities of the Member States and guarantee that the operation of the ship is not obstructed abusively by making provision for compensation in the event of prolonged detention,
- ensure that Member States establish a right of recourse against any decision by the inspection authority,
- abolish the ban on the use of refitting shipyards in non-Community ports,
- stipulate that only irregularities which represent a serious danger to human life or the marine environment warrant a ban on entering Community ports,
- give surveyors the facility to use shipping registers, in order to avoid wasting monitoring capacities,
- stipulate the content of the information to be published on ships detained,
- ensure that the full cost of inspection is reimbursed where irregularities are identified,
- delete the unnecessary references to comitology,
- ensure that priority is given during inspections to ships which have not entered a Community port over the last twelve months and ships carrying chemical products,
- qualify the ships listed in Annex I as cases which warrant more detailed inspection,
- amend the wording of the conditions applicable to surveyors, in order to guarantee that the Member States recruit a sufficient number of surveyors and that surveyors already in office may remain in office.�