Saturday, March 18, 2006

Hello! Why is the EU Commission not doing something? The Finnish boats are now helping the Estonians on "pro bono" basis, fair?


This article tells us about the one problem that should be addressed by the EU Environmantal commissioner and should be dealt with immediately. The problem is that Estonia is reluctant to establish an "Oil Protection Fund" to collect funds from the ships sailing in and out of Estonian harbours and/or waters. They look at this as a form of payment that will lessen their competition ability on the sea trade market.
I say: If we ( Finland and Estonia in this case ) are countries in the EU, the same laws has to be applied on both of us. If one country has cheaper rates on issues like this than its neighbours then someting is really wrong. It just cannot be like that.
The money collected into this fund is then used only to plan and buy equipment for fighting oil spills at sea. So I really hope that mr EU commissioner Stavros Dimas takes this issue seriously and does something about it!

As long as we dont have an EU based European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) base in Porvoo region and Tallinn region, the nations have to come up with the funding themselves to clean any oil spills there are. Now the Finnish government boats are in Estonian waters to try to clean up the oily mess in the ice, not that the Estonian authorities have asked for us to be there, because they dont have any money to pay for it, but because the Finnish government is really scared that the oil will move over into the Finnsih territorial waters and the archipelago, as the ice melts away and the prevailing winds in the spring are from south-west to south. Where is EMSA?

Who believes we can wait till 2011 as the authorities plan this ? See below!

Should we do something?

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