When European Union member states sit around the table in Brussels to discuss regulations for shipping emissions, you can bet your bottom dollar that Greece will object.
Athens will trot out the well-rehearsed lines about “unrealistic” proposals and the need for more “reliable data” before an EU-wide position is adopted.
There are two other certainties: that the Greek position will be almost identical to that of the Union of Greek Shipowners (UGS); and that Athens will be able to rely on the support of Cyprus.
This little bloc was in action before last October’s IMO marine environmental protection committee (MEPC) meeting, when Greece tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the EU calling for CO2 reductions of up to 100%. In the run-up to the implementation of the 2020 low-sulphur rule, too, Greece lobbied for an unofficial grace period, which is sometimes euphemistically referred to as implementation “flexibility”.
There are very few vetoes left in the EU — almost everything is decided by qualified majority — so, given its lack of European allies, Greece also lobbies other IMO member states. But here, too, the lobbying effort frequently proves ineffective due to what can best be described as European Commission browbeating.
The commission is not an IMO member, but its influence there has nevertheless increased steadily over the past decade. The Brussels executive has played the long game: sneaking competence away from the EU’s national governments one policy area at a time, patiently and with some guile.
With sulphur emissions now firmly established as an EU competence, European member states must toe the agreed line at the IMO or risk being taken to the European Court of Justice — an embarrassing outcome that national governments are keen to avoid.
The result is evident frustration when Greece, Cyprus, and to some extent Malta, take to the IMO floor.
Their interventions are sometimes so “diplomatic” — both praising the new emissions regulations and pointing to perceived flaws — that journalists in attendance can be unsure whether the country is in favour or against.
At the October MEPC meeting at which the 2020 sulphur rule was discussed, a journalist approached a delegate to double-check that Malta was opposed to the proposed emissions clampdown. The journalist was told she had heard incorrectly. Malta’s perceived opposition was nevertheless reported in at least one maritime publication.
The Brussels executive claimed that the meeting was a diplomatic victory for the EU. Not only had internal opposition been suppressed, but an alliance with non-EU nations, particularly Japan, succeeded in booting all talk of a 2020 grace period to the IMO’s maritime safety committee (MSC), where the commission expects it to die a lingering death by this summer.
The Brussels executive has played the long game: sneaking competence away from the EU’s national governments one policy area at a time, patiently and with some guile.
Defeated in their attempts to water down the low-sulphur rules (and now unhappy to be associated with any attempt to do so) Greece and Cyprus have since been spotted lobbying for the “flexibility” to represent themselves in the IMO — in effect breaking with the EU position — at forthcoming IMO committee meetings. The unexpressed goal is to weaken port state control checks.
The Hellenic Shortsea Shipowners Association was open in its call for a six-month sulphur grace period, much to the annoyance of the UGS — which might well have backed the call publicly if it hadn’t been miffed by shortsea owners stepping on its policy-making prerogatives.
Less self-interested voices have also raised concerns over the global 0.5% sulphur switch, though.
Martin Stopford, non-executive president of Clarkson Research Services, told a conference last November of his concerns that the entry into force of the low-sulphur rule could trigger disruption including “non-arrivals and deferment of departures”.
One problem he stressed was the number of fuel blends that will be on offer, with bunker providers unlikely to be able to provide all of them. In addition to gasoil distillate, blends of ultra-low-sulphur fuel oil and very-low-sulphur fuel oil will be used for compliance, and they may not be compatible.
“Shipowners must make enquiries to see if engines can operate,” Stopford told the conference. “How many owners have the research capacity to keep ships at sea, given the various grades available?”
Athens and Nicosia broached the subject again in Brussels in December, when national maritime directors from EU member states met Magda Kopczynska of the EC’s Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport. “We agree to harmonised implementation but we want the freedom to speak for ourselves in IMO when we talk about this,” one meeting attendee said afterwards.
The EC’s weight within the IMO decision-making process is, however, now so substantial that insubordination is unlikely to be tolerated.
The commission believes there is little or no chance that the MSC discussions will lead to a delay. “There is already IMO guidance on the 2020 rule, and industry guidance is on the way,” a Brussels source said. “[Opponents] keep trying and trying and trying, but there will be no grace period.”
Shipowner-friendly nations are having to come to terms with the emergence of a bloc EU vote in the IMO. For Greece and its merry band this bodes ill for the one key remaining policy area not yet in the hands of the Brussels institutions: greenhouse gases, specifically CO2 emissions.
Here there is no established EU competence, although the commission’s “monitoring, reporting and verifying” legislation shows that Brussels is starting to muscle its way in.
Calls, mainly from angry Euro MPs, for Brussels to legislate on shipping’s CO2 emissions abounded in 2017, but shipping nations, including on this occasion Denmark, the home of Maersk and its much-publicised goal of becoming carbon-neutral, banded together to ensure the EU did nothing.
This last line of defence could soon fall too. Although reluctant, the EC might be obliged to legislate on CO2, after which it would become an EU competence.
The volume of the voices of Europe’s shipping nations in IMO is slowly declining. On its current trajectory, it is headed for zero within the next few years.
