The EU is a signatory to the International Maritime Organization’s Marpol Annex VI regulations on exhaust emissions. Through its Sulfur Directive, the Commission is committed to reducing the harmful effects caused by sulfur dioxide emissions and requires Member States to submit their compliance reports and testing results each year. It has focused on the sulfur content of liquid fuels, taking on ‘good faith’ the use of those fuels by marine traffic within the Emission Control Zone. It has further relied on scrubber exhaust technology used by vessels to reach the control zone targets. In both instances, reliance is being placed on the vessel operator to use those scrubbers and/or fuels with very limited ability to independently verify such use. Furthermore, the high-cost fuel testing falls on the Member States who, due to the cost, cannot test a large number of vessels and many vessels not meeting the targets are not being identified.
10 July 2025, a question was submitted to the Commission by Michalis Hadjipantela, Member of the European Parliament.
1. Why is the Commission not considering alternative options that would test each vessel effectively, such as direct live testing of maritime vessel exhaust emissions with approved reporting devices?
2. How is it compensating for the maritime vessels that are not being tested and are violating the targets?
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