Western Mediterranean Region Marine Oil and HNS Pollution Cooperation

The Ports and Yachting Directorate within the Authority for Transport in Malta is participating in the Western Mediterranean Region Marine Oil and HNS Pollution Cooperation (West MOPoCo) project.

The EU Funded ECHO project aims are to:

• support a number of Mediterranean and EU countries to enhance their emergency decision-making capabilities;
• assess national contingency plans and strengthen cooperation in the field of preparedness for and response to oil and Highly Noxious Substances (HNS) marine pollution and in improving the quality and interoperability of their response capacities.

The countries participating in the project include Algeria, France, Italy, Malta, Morocco, Spain and Tunisia in collaboration with Monaco. The Project is being implemented through an inter-regional effort, including the participation of the Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Centre for the Mediterranean Sea (REMPEC), the Bonn Agreement for the Greater North Sea and its approaches and the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) for the Baltic Sea. The project is benefiting from the technical support of expert partner institutions such as Cedre, ITOPF and the Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale ISPRA.

The Ports and Yachting Directorate will be participating in activities dedicated to National Oil spill Contingency Planning and Emergency Procedures. The former will provide Mediterranean coastal states with a new harmonised tool for the assessment of their oil spill response planning and readiness capacities. Emergency procedures deals with the strengthening of emergency procedures and the sub-regional cooperation through the development of national mechanisms for the mobilisation of response capacities and the establishment of synergy between existing sub regional plans and arrangements. In addition the Directorate will also be involved in the organisation of workshops and training to fill identified gaps in skills and to disseminate results and outputs of the project.

Further information on the Western Mediterranean Region Marine Oil and HNS Pollution Cooperation (West MOPoCo) project is available on https://www.westmopoco.rempec.org/en/project