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Directive on Reporting Formalities For Ships Arriving At Or Departing From EU Ports

From 19th May, 2012, the new EU Directive 2010/65/EU on reporting formalities, applicable to ships arriving at, or departing from, ports in the European Union, superseded Directive 2002/6/EC. The purpose is to simplify and harmonise the administrative procedures in maritime transport by standardising the electronic transmission of information and by rationalising reporting formalities. It targets the national maritime authorities of the Member States who will be obliged to accept all Facilitation of International Maritime Traffic (FAL) forms for the fulfilment of reporting. They also have to accept electronic reports and their transmission via a single window no later than the 1st of June 2015.

An e-MS Group with various subgroups was established, to discuss the implementation of the Directive, but there is very little progress and it becomes more and more unlikely that the June 2015 deadline will be met. Furthermore, the discussion in the e-MS Group and subgroups have gradually drifted away from the core principles of Directive 2010/65, i.e. simplifying, harmonising and rationalising reporting formalities. Member States have yet to agree on a definition of the "maritime single windows", there is no harmonisation of the data elements to be submitted and no net (cost) benefit for the shipping industry.

To complicate the issue, discussions are also taking place in the context of the "AnNa Project" (Advanced National Networks for Administrations), which is funded by the European Union, a parallel initiative towards rationalising and harmonising of ships messages and towards setting up the 'National Single Windows' technical and operational specifications. There are many inconsistencies between the work of the e-MS Group on data mapping and the work being carried out by the AnNa project.

Given the above, the shipping industry has asked for a postponement of 15th June, 2015 deadline.
There is a similar lack of progress in the development of the "e-Maritime" concept, which aims at optimising ships and cargo related-port processes, at reducing administrative burdens by looking into existing practices, processes and regulations, and at proposing improvements in electronics communication between different actors.