Ital Florida accident in 2007
A British MEP has told the European Parliament that 2,000 containers are lost overboard from ships in EU waters every year. Labour’s Brian Simpson – who chairs the parliament’s Transport Committee – was questioning the Commission on how the problem can be tackled.
He said there was a problem of overloaded containers and poor standards of lashing and stowing and called for automatic tracking beacons to be attached to every container.
A number of MEPs called for the Commission to take a tougher position, with French centre-right MEP Dominique Riquet highlighting that many containers float rather than sinking, posing a serious risk to other ships.