Passenger nationality can now be a security vulnerability, according to the EU's maritime safety agency. In its cruise-ship assessment on the malicious use of drones, "Israeli citizens commonly among the passengers" appears in the list of potential vulnerabilities, alongside the ship's route and its exposure on deck. Pool deck closes should be considered whatever the ship's position under certain risk scenarios.
Going dark
The same document tells ships facing drone attack to consider switching off AIS. Security plans "may include simple tactics such as switching off the AIS to complicate being targeted", EMSA writes, and the advice recurs in its treatment of missile threats. SOLAS has always left the master that discretion. What is new is an EU agency writing the tactic into the machinery of the EU's ship and port security rules while the same institutions treat a dark ship as a suspect ship: switched-off or manipulated AIS is among the conduct cited when vessels are designated under the Russia sanctions for "irregular and high-risk shipping practices".
EMSA concedes it "might be questionable" whether Red Sea-style attacks by state actors fall under the ISPS Code at all given that the tactics resemble those of other malicious drone users. Grey-zone warfare is being pulled into a port-security instrument written for terrorism and crime. Sea drones, which EMSA says "might be more effective" than air drones, are left to future research.
The word that dare not speak its name
The EU has filed its submission for the September IMO working group meeting in London, and the IMO Net-Zero "Fund", the element of the framework Washington has called a global carbon tax, is described in it but never named.
The paper, signed by all 27 Member States and the Commission, instead sets out the tests any alternative must pass: incentives to balance the extra cost of cleaner fuels, plausible support for small island and least developed states, and review of EU rules to avoid double payment.
China meanwhile has kept the fund but brackets it, "IMO Net-Zero [Fund] [Facility]", and swaps "collected revenue" for "available financial resources".
Liberia and Panama have filed replacement regulations mentioning no fund, no 2050 date and a clause making the IMO measure "the single global measure applicable to international shipping", which would cancel out the EU's own rules; the Emirates would scrap the fuel-intensity standard for a per-ship allowance cut to zero by 2050, with no trading and no carbon price.
EMSA succession
The Commission has opened the search for the next head of EMSA, an appointment that will be made under an updated Regulation putting the director under closer Member State control. The vacancy notice, with applications closing at noon on 29 September, offers an AD14 post, one grade below the AD15 to which the incumbent, Maja Markovčić Kostelac, was promoted in 2024. Her extended mandate runs to the end of 2027, and the recast bars a director whose term has been extended from standing again. The new text requires the director's communications to follow Board-adopted plans, makes own-initiative work in "emerging areas" subject to prior Board approval, and lets the Board chair exclude the director from deliberations where a conflict of interest arises. There were reports last year that some national capitals believed the outgoing director had overstepped her mandate.
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