BALTIC SEAENVIRONMENT PROCEEDINGS No. 59 - Helcom

ships from the traffic. During the first years many
problems were encountered. Many countries did not have
enough inspectors to achieve the goal of 25 %. The information
system worked slowly with micro fiches and inspection
practices varied a lot.
However, in the year 1984 already 7600 ships were inspected
with a percentage of 19,7. In 1986 the figures rose to
8700 and 23,0. The last year statistics ( 1992 ) give
figures 10450 and 23,8. The detention percentage has
varied between 3 and 6.
In the course of years this control system has become an
accepted and appreciated part of the world maritime safety
work. Some big maritime nations have established cooperation
with the European system. First USA and Canada, then
the Russian Federation and Japan have participated in the
PSC Committee meetings. In addition it must be noted that
Maritime Authority of Poland adhered to the memorandum and
started as the 15th full member on 1 January 1992.
IMO encouraged the early ratification of conventions during
1980s. Now you may note that many of the states, which
during that decade have ratified the relevant IMO conventions,
can not in practice fully implement the requirements
of those conventions. The problem is partly caused
by memorandum states, when they during 80s flagged out a
large amount of ships to the flags of developing countries.
The 17th Assembly of IMO has therefore recommended ( A.682
(17)) that port state control should be started in accordance
with the European model also in other parts of the
world. It is obvious that the tight European control
network moves substandard ships to the other parts of the
world. The preparatory work of new control schemes is
proceeding well in Latin America and in the Asia Pacific
region.
When the condition of ships and the competency of crews is
in the first place flag state responsibility, IMO has
furthermore established a Sub-Committee on Flag State
Implementation to work out ways and means to remove
difficulties experienced by some flag states in implementing
IMO instruments.
2. Present situation
When the quantity of inspections in recent years has
settled to 25 % level, a discussion on the quality of the
activity was started. Some maritime disasters in Europe
( Herald of Free Enterprise, Scandinavian Star, Aegean Sea,
Braer etc.) have increased political pressure to monitor
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