On 4 December 2014, the European Parliament Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety approved the compromise agreement reached by the Permanent Representatives Committee and European Parliament as the result of an informal trilogue regarding the monitoring of CO2 emissions from ships. The proposed rules would require owners of ships larger than 5,000 gross tons to monitor, report and verify their carbon emissions on journeys to, from and between EU ports from 1 January 2018. Emissions would be tracked on a per-voyage and annual basis. Failure to comply with these provisions will result in effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties; the exact details of which will be established by the individual Member States. The original European Commission legislative proposal can be found here.
The European Council will now need to reach a political agreement at the Environmental Council meeting on 17 December, which would then be followed by legal and linguistic revision before transmission for approval by a plenary of the European Parliament. The legislative process may conclude as soon as spring 2015.
