Portuguese and Greek Prime Ministers visit European Maritime Safety Agency
Prime Minister António Costa of Portugal and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece visited the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) in Lisbon on 11 January 2021, hosted by the Agency’s Executive Director, Maja Markovčić Kostelac, EMSA says in a press release.
EMSA is a community agency of the European Union (EU), founded in 2002, and dedicated to ensuring maritime safety and security in the EU’s waters.
During their visit, the two Prime Ministers received an overview of EMSA’s activities, including the Agency’s contribution to the European green agenda for maritime transport, its support to the EU’s maritime economy, and the advanced monitoring and surveillance systems developed to assist Member States and maritime bodies.
They toured EMSA’s Maritime Support Services operational centre, which receives approximately 30 million messages each day from ships in EU coastal waters, and carries out round-the-clock surveillance to assist Member States to detect and respond to marine accidents and possible oil spills.
The Executive Director also briefed the two Prime Ministers on EMSA’s fleet of pollution response vessels, which are based in ports around the EU, including in Piraeus (Greece) and Sines (Portugal).
The European Maritime Safety Agency is one of the European Union’s decentralised agencies established for the purpose of ensuring a high, uniform and effective level of maritime safety, maritime security, prevention of and response to pollution from ships, as well as response to marine pollution from oil and gas installations. The agency promotes a safe, clean and economically viable maritime sector in the EU.
