Anmerkungen:
In: UPES Law Review Vol. 1, No. 1 (2013). pp. 1-26
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments March 3, 2014 erstellt
Beschreibung:
The article examines Finland’s policy as regards to the air pollution from ships, currently regulated under the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from ships MARPOL and its Sixth Protocol on Air Pollution; an issue that is regulated not only by international law, but also in particular under the European law. The Air Pollution protocol requires far-reaching commitments from its parties to minimize sulphur and nitrate oxide emissions from ships, particularly in the emission control areas. One of these emission control areas is located in the Baltic Sea, Finland being one of its littoral states, because of the changes to the air pollution protocol found itself to be in a situation when its economic and environmental protection interests collided. On the one hand, the revisions to the protocol caused heavy costs for the ship transport in the Baltic Sea, which is very important means for delivering export goods to the markets. On the other hand, mitigating air pollution is of vast importance from the viewpoint of protecting the ecological systems of Baltic Sea. Because of commercial reasons, Finland opted out of the air pollution protocol of MARPOL, when revisions were made to this protocol in 2005. The country is bound to follow the EU law, which also regulates shipping emissions, given that it is one of the Member States of the European Union. The main research question pursued in this article is whether Finland can release itself from the obligations contained in the revised air pollution protocol by opting out of the protocol, in light of the country’s obligations under European law