How is compliance with the regulation enforced?
Compliance with monitoring and reporting requirements and inspections
Based on the information published in accordance with Article 21(1), each Member State shall take all the measures necessary to ensure compliance with the monitoring and reporting requirements set out in Articles 8 to 12 by ships flying its flag. Member States shall regard the fact that a document of compliance has been issued for the ship concerned, in accordance with Article 17(4), as evidence of such compliance.
Each Member State shall ensure that any inspection of a ship in a port under its jurisdiction carried out in accordance with Directive 2009/16/EC includes checking that a valid document of compliance is carried on board.
For each ship in respect of which the information referred to in points (i) and (j) of Article 21(2), is not available at the time when it enters a port under the jurisdiction of a Member State, the Member State concerned may check that a valid document of compliance is carried on board.
Source: Regulation 2015/757 Art. 20
Penalties, information exchange and expulsion order
Member States shall set up a system of penalties for failure to comply with the monitoring and reporting obligations set out in Articles 8 to 12 and shall take all the measures necessary to ensure that those penalties are imposed. The penalties provided for shall be effective, proportionate and dissuasive. Member States shall notify those provisions to the Commission by 1 July 2017, and shall notify to the Commission without delay any subsequent amendments.
Member States shall establish an effective exchange of information and effective cooperation between their national authorities responsible for ensuring compliance with monitoring and reporting obligations or, where applicable, their authorities entrusted with penalty procedures. National penalty procedures against a specified ship by any Member State shall be notified to the Commission, the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), to the other Member States and to the flag State concerned.
In the case of ships that have failed to comply with the monitoring and reporting requirements for two or more consecutive reporting periods and where other enforcement measures have failed to ensure compliance, the competent authority of the Member State of the port of entry may issue an expulsion order which shall be notified to the Commission, EMSA, the other Member States and the flag State concerned. As a result of the issuing of such an expulsion order, every Member State shall refuse entry of the ship concerned into any of its ports until the company fulfils its monitoring and reporting obligations in accordance with Articles 11 and 18. The fulfilment of those obligations shall be confirmed by the notification of a valid document of compliance to the competent national authority which issued the expulsion order. This paragraph shall be without prejudice to international maritime rules applicable in the case of ships in distress.
The shipowner or operator of a ship or its representative in the Member States shall have the right to an effective remedy before a court or tribunal against an expulsion order and shall be properly informed thereof by the competent authority of the Member State of the port of entry. Member States shall establish and maintain appropriate procedures for this purpose.
Any Member State without maritime ports in its territory and which has closed its national ship register or has no ships flying its flag that fall within the scope of this Regulation, and as long as no such ships are flying its flag, may derogate from the provisions of this Article. Any Member State that intends to avail itself of that derogation shall notify the Commission at the latest on 1 July 2015. Any subsequent change shall also be communicated to the Commission.
Source: Regulation 2015/757 Art. 21
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