France & Spain invoke powers to inspect oil tankers

28th November 2002

France and Spain, both victims of recent oil tanker disasters, vowed this week to push ahead without their European partners and start immediate inspections of dangerous oil tankers off their coasts.

With Spain's northern beaches ravaged by a huge spill from a sunken tanker, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and French President Jacques Chirac said they would take unilateral action from Wednesday to crack down on suspect tankers sailing up to 320 km (200 miles) off their coasts.

"Today we decided enough was enough," Chirac said at a news conference with Aznar after an annual Franco-Spanish summit in the southern Spanish port of Malaga.
Aznar said he and Chirac hoped other European Union countries would join their initiative at a Copenhagen summit next month. But he said Spain was not ready to take risks while it waited for the EU to take decisions on maritime safety.
"We have decided that as of tomorrow ships built more than 15 years ago that have a single hull and transport fuel oil or tar and are a danger to our coasts must be exhaustively checked," Aznar said.

Tankers will have to give French and Spanish authorities information on their cargo, destination, flag and operators.

If there is any doubt of a ship's seaworthiness, French or Spanish authorities may call for spot inspections and expel dangerous ships from their exclusive economic zones, which stretch 200 miles out to sea, Aznar said.

He said the measure was based on Article 56 of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

AZNAR REJECTS CRITICISM

Aznar rejected criticism by the opposition, some media and environmental groups of Spain's centre-right government over its handling of the Prestige disaster, describing the critics as "coffee-house strategists".
The 26-year-old, single-hulled tanker was holed in a violent storm off Spain's northwestern coast and left a trail of fuel while it was towed out to sea before it snapped in two and sank in deep Atlantic waters a week ago.
Oil from the Prestige has washed up on scores of northern Spanish beaches, polluting hundreds of birds and putting many fishermen and shellfish gatherers temporarily out of work.
Spain said this week that two specialised vessels had sucked 1,950 tonnes of thick fuel oil from the Atlantic and that more than 700 workers had scraped tonnes of residue from more than 100 beaches in the northwestern region of

Galicia

France suffered a similar disaster in 1999 when the tanker Erika broke up, polluting a long stretch of French coast.
The EU passed a package of new rules after the Erika disaster, including a global phase-out of single-hulled tankers by 2015, toughened inspection standards at EU ports and the creation of a European maritime safety agency. But most of the measures do not come into force until next July.

Spain is among states now impatient to have those measures implemented as soon as possible.

Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio told reporters in Malaga that Spain may ask the International Maritime Organisation to move the busy shipping corridor off western Spain further out to sea. It is currently about 25 miles from the Galician coast.

Story by Sophie Louet and Adrian Croft
REUTERS