Luxembourg, International — Greenpeace will present EU
transport ministers with a 
'message in a bottle' at the entrance to
the European Conference Centre building in Luxembourg before the
start of the Transport Council meeting on Thursday 21 April (1). The
bottle contains rusty remnants of the Greek-owned oil tanker 'Amina'
that exploded in 2003 at a shipbreaking yard in India, killing nine
workers and causing serious injuries to others (2).
"These chunks of rusty metal symbolise the lives
lost and the environmental pollution caused by sending old ships to
Asia for scrap without first cleaning them of hazardous substances.
It's now two weeks since the global ban on single hull oil tankers
came into force (3) but EU transport ministers and the European
Commission have still given no guarantee that these toxic ships will
be scrapped safely and cleanly," said Marietta Harjono, Greenpeace
International toxics campaigner.
According to a Greenpeace
analysis (4), over 2,000 single hull tankers will be removed from
the water and scrapped within five years. More than 1,000 tankers
(of which 334 are either owned by European companies or registered -
"flagged" - in Europe) are expected to be scrapped in 2005, a figure
that dwarfs previous estimates.
"Unless action is taken, a
successful piece of legislation will lead to terrible consequences -
the toxic burden of Europe's single hulled tankers will end up on
Asian beaches, threatening with a human and environmental
catastrophe" said Harjono.
(1) Centre de Conférences - FIL - 5, rue
Carlo Hemmer, Luxembourg
Luxembourg Minister of Transport and
Environment Lucien Lux is meeting Greenpeace before the start of the
Transport Council at the European conference centre, as an
expression of the Luxembourg Presidency's desire to deal with the
issue.
(2) Alang, India 22 February 2003.
(3) On 5 April 2005 the global phase out legislation (MARPOL I
13G) entered into force under the International Maritime
Organisation (IMO). Under the United Nations Basel Convention,
vessels due to be broken are considered toxic waste and should not
be exported from OECD countries to non-OECD countries.
(4) The report 'Destination Unknown:
European single hull oil tankers... No place to go' to download at
http://www.greenpeaceweb.org/shipbreak/destination.pdf.
This report is based on the EU Commission assessment (COWI/EU). For
more information, see http://www.greenpeaceweb.org/shipbreak/
