The European Commission's role in marine materials, equipment and components mutual recognition certification

The European Commission has, in the past, updated regulations regarding marine operations in order to enhance safety and protection of the environment. In that respect and with the scope to enhance safety onboard ships, Regulation No 391/2009 and in particular Article 10.1 on certification of ships, suggested that European Union Recognised Organisations (EU ROs) should harmonise their rules and procedures related to certification of materials, equipment and components based on equivalent standards issued by them. As a result the EU ROs Mutual Recognition (MR) scheme was initiated. This paper investigates the current implementation of the requirements of Article 10 through a developed questionnaire and case studies. The results have shown that the current level of implementation is regarded as acceptable and safety is adhered to the highest standard. Moreover, the current implementation needs further improvement and harmonisation of individual rules may be required. EU RO requirements can be further developed in the future as the overall process matures. Additional information and dissemination of the overall MR process is also required engaging additional stakeholders in the marine industry. However, the expansion of the scheme presents challenging issues to overcome including the global acceptance of the MR certification