In an evaluation released in late February, 2025, the European Commission highlighted the progress that the SRR has made thus far in supporting global standards, both existing and upcoming, such as the “Hong Kong International Convention
for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships”, set to enter force in June 2025, though with full compliance required by 2030.
The SRR mandates EU-flagged vessels to recycle at facilities on the European List that comprises around 43 greenlit yards, including 31 in Europe, 11 in Türkiye, and one in the United States. Among these, in its latest, 14th edition of the list, the EU has included one facility from the Netherlands, and one newcomer from Türkiye. Three facilities, located in Lithuania, Türkiye and Latvia, have reportedly been removed.
Despite making “considerable” headway, however, the Brussels-headquartered executive arm of the European Union underscored that the ship recycling regulation has been met with major stumbling blocks.
The most pressing issue, the commission has said, is shipowners who circumvent the regulation by switching to non-EU flags before recycling, allowing them to sell end-of-life vessels to cash buyers at steel prices that exceed EU rates who then dismantle the ships at South Asian yards where conditions more often than not fail to meet EU standards.
According to Belgium-based organization NGO Shipbreaking Platform, last year, 80% of the global vessel tonnage scrapped—meaning 255 out of 409 dismantled ships—was broken under unsafe conditions on the beaches of South Asia, primarily in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, all of which have ratified the Hong Kong Convention.
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