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“Despite this, around 30% of ships
entering the area don’t follow these best
management practices. The vast majority of
vessels captured have made this mistake.”
But what of those operators that do take
precautions? The MSC Melody was 600
miles from the coast and had added 400
miles to its route, yet was only saved by the
presence of armed forces on board.
Theologitis acknowledges that there is an
element of “pure bad luck” in such a
scenario, but does not believe that the
cruise ship’s escape validates the presence
of armed guards.
“This does not fall under community
competence and the Commission’s line is
not binding,” he acknowledges, “but we
believe there should be no security
personnel on board who do not have an
official mandate by the flag state in
question. We want to avoid the problems of
liability, responsibility and rules of
engagement that private security firms
might bring.
“It is also essential that we don’t escalate
the violence. I hate saying this, but at the
moment piracy is mainly a dirty business
transaction. We must avoid escalating it into
A world class service
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the Strait of Malacca. “A lot of European
funding went into the area,” he explains. “It
was invested in surveillance and capacity
building operations and the development of
Indonesian and Malaysian coastguards.
Now that they are able to police those
waters themselves the instance of attacks
has gone down dramatically. Through
engagement we are able to get real results.”
Funding, coordination, information,
dialogue and the development of best
management practices will all go towards
achieving this end goal, and the EC is
committed to confronting member states
with their responsibility to ensure IMO
recommendations are followed. The
results will not be instantaneous, but
Theologitis believes the issue of piracy is
not insurmountable.
“Cruise vessels are certainly a lucrative
target,” he acknowledges, “and operators
do need to be aware of that and use all
the information at their disposal to carry
out a full risk assessment. Stakeholders
also need to support the measures that
are already being taken. At some point
the seas will become safe again, but
it will not be tomorrow.” �
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