Proposal for a regulation
Article 5 a (new)
Article 5a Financing the environmentally sound recycling and treatment of ships 1. Member States shall ensure that ports collect an additional recycling levy from EU ships and non-EU ships calling at a port or anchorage within their territory from ...*. 2. The recycling levy shall be set at EUR 0,03 per gross tonne. For ships such as ferries that regularly and frequently call at the same port, Member States shall ensure that ports apply the same reductions for the recycling levy as they apply for the general port fee. 3. Member States shall recover the recycling levy from port administrations, preferably as part of their general system for collecting taxes and other charges from port administrations, and transfer it entirely to a Recycling Fund set up by the Commission no later than two months after recovery of the recycling levy. The Recycling Fund shall be managed in a risk-averse manner, and apart from the costs for its administration, shall be entirely used to disburse the premiums referred to in paragraph 4. 4. The objective of the Recycling Fund is to contribute to making ship recycling which complies with this Regulation economically viable. The Recycling Fund shall provide a premium for ship recycling facilities on the European list for the recycling of EU ships that have been flying the flag of a Member State for at least two years prior to the approval of the ship recycling plan. Recycling facilities may apply to the premium in relation to contracts signed after ...** The Recycling Fund shall also provide a premium for ship recycling facilities on the European list for the recycling of abandoned ships in the EU which fly a non-EU flag. The provision of this premium shall be time-limited to those ships which have been left unattended for at least two years. 5. The premium shall be set at a minimum of EUR 30 per light displacement tonne. The premium shall be payable by the Recycling Fund within two months of receiving the report of completion of the ship recycling in accordance with the form laid down in Annex III, as well as the inventory of the ship, the report documenting the quantities of waste treated, and the corresponding treatment processes, as laid down in point (ca) of Article 13(5). 6. Every year, the Commission shall publicly report on the income of the Recycling Fund, the recipients of the premiums disbursed and the amounts of those premiums. 7. The Commission shall be empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 26 to adapt the level of the recycling levy where necessary to achieve the objective of the Recycling Fund. 8. The Commission shall assess no later than ...*** the benefits and costs of differentiating the recycling fee based on the information in the inventory of hazardous materials. If the benefits outweigh the costs, the Commission shall be empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 26 concerning the differentiation of the recycling levy based on the information in the inventory of hazardous materials, while safeguarding sufficient funding of the Recycling Fund. _____________________ * OJ please insert the date: 1 January of the year that follows one year after entry into force of this Regulation ** OJ please insert the date: 1 January of the second year that follows one year after entry into force of this Regulation *** OJ please insert the date: five years after the entry into force of this Regulation (This is a first proposal for an economic instrument. It should not be seen as the perfect formula, but as a working proposal subject to further refinement. The figures are based on a Commission study from 2009 that can be found on http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/ship s/pdf/fund_note.pdf Assuming a total of 4 bn GT per year calling at EU ports, the levy would collect a total of EUR 120 mio €/year. This would allow paying a premium of a maximum of EUR 75 per LDT for an average of 1.6 mio LDT of EU ships to be sent to recycling every year, assuming that the management costs of the fund can be financed by the interest from the amount gathered in the feed-in period.)