European Maritime Safety Agency

Lisbon, Portugal

June 27, 2002

The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA; English European Maritime Safety Agency ) was established in response to the sinking of the oil tanker " Erika " and contributes to the improvement of maritime security in the waters of the Union. So the risk of maritime accidents, marine pollution from ships and the loss of human life is to be reduced at sea. The Agency has its seat since 2006 in Lisbon, began work but 2002 in Brussels.

Legal basis

The legal basis is Regulation No 1406/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council.

Tasks

EMSA task is to advise the European Commission on technical and scientific issues in the field of maritime safety and the prevention of marine pollution by ships. Additionally, she supports the Commission in the ongoing development and updating of legislation, monitoring its implementation and the evaluation of effectiveness of existing measures. For this purpose, lead representative of the Agency inspections in the Member States by.

Furthermore, counts the active support in the application of the Community port State control and supervision of the recognized at European level classification societies by their mandate. The supporting activity comes EMSA also assist in developing a common approach to the investigation of marine casualties and the setting up of a European information system for maritime traffic.

EMSA is the contact for requests from the Member States, in connection with the specific application of the Community rules, as are, for example, the monitoring of vessel traffic, port state control and the responsibility of flag States. In this way, encouraging cooperation between Member States and the dissemination of good practice in the community. As such, it also plays an important role in the EU's enlargement process, as it helps the candidate countries to adopt the acquis communautaire in the field of maritime safety and prevention of pollution by ships and apply.

Finally, the EMSA, the Commission and Member States supported in assessing the effectiveness of these regulations, by providing them with objective, reliable and comparable data on maritime safety and marine pollution by ships.