L 234/52
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
22.9.2023
(16)
Member States that do not share a land border with any other Member State are particularly dependent on their maritime connection to the rest of the Union, in particular to maintain necessary connectivity for their citizens.
Such Member States have to rely on public service contracts or public service obligations in order to achieve the goal of maintaining connectivity through passenger ships.
A temporary exemption should be allowed in order to enable Member States to address the compelling need of providing a service of general economic interest and ensure connectivity as well as economic, social and territorial cohesion.
(17)
In addition to a general possibility for Member States to exempt voyages performed by passenger ships, other than cruise passenger ships, to islands with fewer than 200 000 permanent residents, a similar exemption should be allowed with regard to domestic voyages to islands which are performed within the framework of a public service contract or subject to a public service obligation.
Such contracts and obligations have been established by Member States in order to ensure an appropriate level of connectivity to island regions at affordable prices, which would otherwise not have been achieved by market forces.
Member States should be entitled to temporarily exempt such voyages performed by passenger ships between its mainland and an island of the same Member State, in order to maintain the conditions under which the public service contracts or public service obligations were established and ensure the sustained connectivity, as well as the economic, social and territorial cohesion, of the island concerned.
(18)
Article 2, point 1, of Council Regulation (EEC) No 3577/92 (14) establishes that the ports situated in Ceuta and Melilla are to be treated in the same way as island ports.
Although they are not island ports by nature, their geographical position in mainland Africa and absence of land links with Spain means that, in relation to mainland Europe and in particular to Spain, those ports are comparable to island ports.
Therefore, Ceuta and Melilla should be considered to be island ports in relation to the temporary exemption for the maritime cabotage between the mainland of a Member State and the islands under its jurisdiction.
(19)
Sailing in ice conditions, especially in the northern parts of the Baltic Sea, and the technical properties of ice-class ships cause additional costs for maritime transport and such costs could be further increased by this Regulation.
Such additional costs for ice-class ships due to sailing in ice conditions and due to their technical properties should be mitigated in order to maintain a level playing field.
Companies should therefore be allowed to apply a limited adjusted amount of energy used on board for ice-class ships.
In addition, for a limited period of time, this Regulation should enable a share of the additional energy used during sailing in ice conditions to be exempted for the specific periods during which ice-class ships face conditions of navigation in ice.
To that end, a verifiable methodology should be established to enable correlation between exempted share of energy and actual ice navigation conditions.
The Commission should reassess such methodology, in particular in light of the robustness of the monitoring of the data necessary to report the distance and the additional energy of navigation in ice conditions, with a view to possibly extending that measure.
(20)
The entity responsible for ensuring compliance with this Regulation should be the company, defined as the shipowner or any other organisation or person, such as the manager or the bareboat charterer, that has assumed responsibility for the operation of the ship from the shipowner and that, on assuming such responsibility, has agreed to take over all the duties and responsibilities imposed by the International Management Code for the Safe Operation of Ships and for Pollution Prevention as implemented within the Union by Regulation (EC) No 336/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council (15).
The definition of company under this Regulation is in line with the global data collection system established in 2016 by the International Maritime Organization (IMO).
(14) Council Regulation (EEC) No 3577/92 of 7 December 1992 applying the principle of freedom to provide services to maritime transport within Member States (maritime cabotage) (OJ L 364, 12.12.1992, p. 7).
(15) Regulation (EC) No 336/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 February 2006 on the implementation of the International Safety Management Code within the Community and repealing Council Regulation (EC) No 3051/95 (OJ L 64, 4.3.2006, p. 1).