Joint Position Paper on Maritime Single Window
Together with the European Associations of the Private Port Companies and Terminals, Sea Ports, Ship Brokers and Agents, Port Community Systems and the Shippers, CLECAT published their position paper on the Ship Reporting Formalities Directive (RFD), also known as the Maritime Single Window initiative. The intention of the paper is to elaborate on how the revision of the RFD can achieve the Commission’s initial objectives, namely: EU harmonised reporting for ships, the establishment of a maximum dataset and the efficient re-use of data.
Improvement of the RFD, however, should not mean the creation of new systems (again) but rather improvement of interoperability between existing ones through harmonised data exchange between authorities (A2A) and between the private sector and authorities (B2A). Furthermore, reporting concepts like “only-once” and the harmonisation of reporting requirements does not mean authorities simply adding ever more data sharing requirements, without providing any tangible benefit to the parties on which the burden falls, or their customers. Therefore, authorities are urged to actively review the reporting data they currently require and remove any found to be redundant.
In summary, any legal measure should not be focused on creating systems or solutions, but rather on enabling the private sector to share and re-use the data and systems already available, through data harmonisation and integration.
DG MOVE of the EU Commission is currently preparing their new legislative proposal in order to renew and improve the Maritime Single Window environment. In 2016, the Commission launched a REFIT evaluation of the RFD. The outcome of the support study led to the conclusion that the objectives of the RFD were not (or only partially) attained and that the positive impact of the various Single Windows is small, sometimes even negative for the private sector. The new proposal is expected in May of this year.
The paper may be found below.