BALTIC SEAENVIRONMENT PROCEEDINGS No. 59 - Helcom

Jukka Hakamies
Secretary of International Affairs
National Board of Navigation
1 September 1993
FINLAND AND THE EUROPEAN PORT STATE CONTROL
1. A Short History
The European Port State Control has been in operation since
1982. The cooperation was started between 11 EC countries
and Norway, Sweden and Finland.
The goals of the work have been defined in the Paris
Memorandum of Understanding: Each Maritime Authority
endeavours to inspect annually 25 % of individual foreign
merchant ships, which enter its ports. The objective is to
control that ships fulfil the requirements of the most
important IMO conventions on maritime safety and pollution
prevention and that the labour conditions on board generally
are in accordance with IL0 convention 147.
The port state control cooperation is directed by a
committee composed of a representative of each authority
and of the EC commission. The Committee meets twice a year
rotating in each member country.
The administrative work is carried out by a small secretariat
( 3 persons ) in Rijswijk in the Netherlands and
inspection results are collected to the data centre of the
French Maritime Administration in Saint Malo.
To harmonize the inpection work seminars are organized to
field surveyors, nowadays twice a year. Important topics
studied in seminars have included Marpol annex II inplementation
and control of labour conditions in accordance
with IL0 instructions. As a result of systematic training
efforts surveyors have quite a comprehensive Surveyor's
Manual.
Ministerial Conferences have been organized at a few years'
intervals to discuss the results of the activity and to
give guidance for future work. Next Ministerial Conference
will be in Copenhagen in September 1994.
The aim of the activity has been to remove substandard
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