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Passenger ships: safety rules and standards. Recast

2007/0257(COD)

PURPOSE: to recast Council Directive 98/18/EC on safety rules and standards for passenger ships.

LEGISLATIVE ACT: Directive 2009/45/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on safety rules and standards for passenger ships (Recast).

CONTENT: the codification of Council Directive 98/18/EC of 17 March 1998 was initiated by the Commission. The new Directive was to have superseded the various acts incorporated in it.

In the meantime Decision 1999/468/EC laying down the procedures for the exercise of implementing powers conferred on the Commission was amended by Decision 2006/512/EC, which introduced a regulatory procedure with scrutiny for measures of general scope designed to amend non-essential elements of a basic instrument adopted in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 251 of the Treaty (co-decision procedure), including by deleting some of those elements or by supplementing the instrument by the addition of new non-essential elements.

In accordance with the joint statement of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission on Decision 2006/512/EC, for this new procedure to be applicable to instruments adopted in accordance with the co-decision procedure which are already in force, those instruments must be adjusted in accordance with the applicable procedures.

In particular, the Commission should be empowered to adapt certain provisions of this Directive, including its Annexes, to take account of developments at international level and specifically amendments to International Conventions. Since those measures are of general scope and are designed to amend non-essential elements of this Directive, they must be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny provided for in Article 5a of Decision 1999/468/EC.

Therefore, the aim of this Directive is to transform the codification of Directive 98/18/EC into a recast in order to incorporate the amendments necessary for the adjustment to the regulatory procedure with scrutiny.

ENTRY INTO FORCE: 15 July 2009.