Brussels publishes blacklist of 66 dangerous ships

The European Commission issued a blacklist of 66 ships yesterday that should be banned from European waters and ports, in an effort to prevent oil spills like the one devastating Spain's north-west Galician coast.

The Commission called for a ban on the transport of heavy fuel in single-hulled vessels similar to the Prestige, which sank off the Spanish coast two weeks ago. It also instructed EU states to speed the implementation of rules drawn up after the tanker Erika spilt fuel off the French coast in 1999.

"We must make sure catastrophes like this do not happen ever again," said the EU transport commissioner, Loyola de Palacio, a former Spanish agriculture minister. "It is necessary to act and apply the maritime safety measures in full. Safety is the responsibility of everyone, and strict application of all the measures is the only way of ensuring that substandard ships do not fall through the net."

Of the 66 barred ships, 26 were listed from Turkey, 12 from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and nine from Cambodia. The list named 49 bulk carriers, eight chemical tankers and eight oil tankers, plus a passenger vessel, Gabrielle, from Bolivia.

"Access [to ports] must be prohibited to ships on that list," Ms de Palacio said. She also appealed to ministers to enact the new measures at the EU summit in Copenhagen next week. "We must put an end to these risks, to these ecological time bombs that navigate our coasts," Ms de Palacio said.

In response to the Erika spill, which devastated the shellfish industry on the western French coast, the EU passed legislation last year to phase out single-hull tankers, but not until 2015.

The EU also approved measures to tighten controls on vessels carrying dangerous cargo, empowering member countries to veto vessels from leaving port in bad weather or their entry to port if human life or the environment were threatened. Many EU governments have yet to implement the measures.

Meanwhile in Galicia's Ria de Arosa, 165 fishing boats have converged on the mouth of the inlet to try to block the arrival of 20 oil patches, amounting to some 700 tons of fuel, that threaten the finest mussel beds in Europe. This is the southern-most section of the European coast to be threatened by the oil disgorged from the Prestige.

Portuguese scientists monitoring the fuel oil by satellite warn that while the slick is still two miles off shore, its arrival is "imminent". Further north, French authorities warned yesterday that the slick was approaching France.