Strategic Priorities

Better Regulation

Participate actively in the EU’s drive for smarter and better regulation to help make European shipping stronger and more competitive.

The European shipping industry fully supports the European Union's drive for smarter and better regulation.

Through our dialogue with both EU and national regulators, our industry agrees with our stakeholders and partners that regulations can help make shipping stronger and more competitive. Only with the unwavering support of both national governments and the EU institutions, European shipping, as the cornerstone of Europe's global trade, can remain the world leader both in terms of quantity and quality.

There is however improvement to be made. The trilogue process could be more transparent and there should be more reasonable time scales to respond to consultation exercises. The application process for EU funding programmes could be further simplified.

ECSA stresses the importance of proper impact assessments being made and stresses the need to ensure that proper consultations are held ahead of initial thought processes underway for any proposal. Consulting ECSA and other stakeholders in a very early stage of policy making is a key condition for effective and efficient regulations.

ECSA stands ready to engage with the regulator at all stages of policy making. Better regulation entails not only an assessment of whether new initiatives and especially legislative ones are necessary but also that new initiatives, legislative or non should work first and foremost through a bottom up approach if they are to be successful and cater for the needs of all players and avoid being counterproductive.

There are positive examples of how the shipping industry is engaged in the advisory consultations, such as the European Sustainable Shipping Forum (ESFF) through which ECSA and other stakeholders can deliver technical input for the Commission and Member States. ECSA is likewise engaged in the European Commission's Market Access Advisory Committee and the Stakeholder Advisory Group on Maritime Security.

 

For these reasons, ECSA supports:

  • the EU in becoming a more transparent and accessible regulator. This will benefit the quality of its regulations and the broader uptake of its initiatives.