EU: The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) has urged the EU to postpone a monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) initiative for ships' carbon dioxide emissions to give the IMO time to launch a global scheme.
Reacting to this week's announcement that EU member states, the European Commission, and the European Parliament had agreed to go ahead with implementing the project, the ICS warned that the plan could conflict with a future IMO scheme.
Legislation to set up the EU scheme, planned for next year, would "complicate and perhaps jeopardise ... delicate negotiations", said the ICS.
While the EU scheme would not take effect until 2018, it is unclear whether the European Commission would be ready to "fully realign" its rules with those to come from the IMO, added the ICS.
Earlier this week, ECSA - representing European shipowners - stopped short of calling on the EU to reschedule its plan but suggested the EU engage in "confidence-building" to reassure non-European IMO member states of its support for a global scheme.
But the ICS said it sees "no reason why the EU needs to finalise this regional regulation so quickly when it will not be implemented until 2018".
"ICS believes it would be far better if the EU institutions delayed final adoption until after IMO has been given a proper chance to build on the good progress it has recently made towards delivering a global regulation on data collection," said the organisation.