CoESS Recommendations: Guidance for the resumption of cruise ship operations in the EU
The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) has revealed plans to coordinate the development of guidance for the resumption of operations of cruise ships in the EU in the context of the COVID-19 situation. CoESS believes this to be a very important step to ensure coordination of the gradual restoration of cruise services at EU level, taking into account the overall public health situation, and has published today recommendations from the private security sector.
As already stated in previous position papers on tourism and transport, private security is asked to implement many of the recommendations listed in the Healthy Gateways General guidance for restarting transportation activities to serve tourism after lifting restrictive measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the European Commission’s Guidelines on the progressive restoration of transport services and connectivity (C(2020) 3139 final), such as pre-boarding screening efforts, provision of information to passengers, as well as the implementation of access control and social distancing measures.
In this context, CoESS strongly recommends that an EU guidance document on the resumption of cruise ship operations considers the following aspects:
- In procurement and contracting practices, buyers must make sure that security staff is adequately trained and equipped, if personnel is to implement infection prevention and control measures at ship and port facilities.
- Buyers of private security services should require that providers show compliance with the relevant standard, namely EN16747:2015, which lists the quality criteria for security services suppliers for Maritime and Port environments.
CoESS also believes that a reference to the Best Value Guide for “Buying Quality Private Security Services” would be valuable to make in EMSA’s guidance document. It was developed by CoESS and UNI Europa thanks to European Commission funding and is available at www.securebestvalue.org.
You can find the full statement here.
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