The introduction of Port State Control on foreign ships in national ports is based on the agreement of fourteen European countries to join forces and take action against unsafe ships, inadequately trained crews and irresponsible shipowners, as a result of the accident of the crude oil tanker "AMOCO CADIZ", which ran aground off the French coast in 1978.
In 1982, the Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control was adopted. The rapid and apparent success of the adopted Memorandum of understanding in Europe triggered the development and adoption of similar Port State Control Agreements globally.
The International Maritime Organization IMO encouraged the establishment of regional organizations for Port State Control. To date, 9 specific regional agreements or memorandum of understanding on Port State Control have been adopted, covering all ports of the world's oceans. The U.S. Coast Guard controls ports in the U.S. territory and is considered the tenth Port State Control organization.
On January 1, 2011, a new inspection regime began to operate in the Paris Memorandum area, reshaping and modernizing the Port State Control regime and raising it to a higher level. The European Maritime Safety Agency EMSA developed and established a new information system THETIS, which supports the new inspection regime for the implementation of Port State Control and coordinates standardized procedures for the exchange and transfer of data.
The new inspection regime requires the inspection of 100-% of the number of foreign ships, with a proportional sharing of inspections among individual member states. Ships are classified into three categories based on the calculation of the risk profile, so that more risky ships are subject to more frequent inspections, and that less risky to less frequent inspections.
With the new measures to deny the ship access to the port, repeated violators are prohibited from entering the entire Memorandum area. This has already happened to a considerable number of ships, some of which have already been scrapped and recycled in the meantime. More and more shipowners have realized that substandard ships are no longer tolerated.
Following the example of the Paris Memorandum, some other MoUs have already adopted and introduced similar new inspection regimes. It is through mutual cooperation and the help of memorandums of understanding that shipping is on its way to eliminate substandard ships from the world's seas and oceans once and for all.
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