European Union: Marine safety standards

Besides proposing Community legislation, acting as guardian of the treaties, administering various EU programmes and functioning as the competition and internal market watchdog of the European Union, the Commission makes subsidiary laws in limited cases, in the way national governments issue decrees or ordinances without running the full parliamentary course.

Though limited and subsidiary, these norms can be important for the industries and public bodies concerned.

One example is the upgrading of standards concerning equipment relevant to marine safety, Commission Directive 2009/26/EC of 6 April 2009 amending Council Directive 96/98/EC on marine equipment.

This text with EEA relevance was published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) 6.5.2009 L 113/1, and the provisions are applicable from 6 April 2010.

The about 50 pages of Annex text are far from the bustle (?) of the European election campaign and hardly intelligible for other than experts, but they offer an example of evolving safety standards and ─ in a methodological sense ─ of delegated legislation.


Ralf Grahn