IN 1419 – Public Consultation on the evaluation of the Offshore Safety Directive (2013/30/EU) is now open

The Offshore Safety Directive (OSD) (2013/30/EU) establishes minimum requirements for safety and environmental protection across the EU for offshore oil and gas operations.

According to Article 40 of the OSD, the Commission is obliged to assess Member States’ experience in implementing the Directive in the offshore oil and gas sector and evaluate its effectiveness, relevance, coherence, added value and efficiency, as well as assessing the need to further develop or adjust the Directive. The Commission will base its analysis on a broad set of information relevant to the offshore oil and gas operations in EU and is specifically interested in the views of citizens and stakeholders, private and public entities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are related to offshore oil and gas activities, or could be affected by such activities, e.g. professionals in the oil and gas industry (either as companies or as individuals), research institutions and members of the academia, environmental NGOs, coastal communities and clusters, fisheries organizations, entities from the coastal and marine economy.  The evaluation will also consider how Member States have implemented the Directive into national rules and legislation with regard to their completeness and conformity with the OSD.

A link to the public consultation questionnaire published by the Commission was provided below [link expired].

Part I of the questionnaire includes a general set of questions for participants with various levels and types of experience with the subject, whilst Parts II and III include questions on certain parts of the OSD and specific themes and mainly concern contributors with experience in the field. Participants may submit their views by responding to those parts or sections which they consider relevant to their level of experience.

The questionnaire is available in the official languages of those EU countries which have or plan to have offshore oil and gas operations, i.e. Bulgarian, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish.

The Commission will submit an evaluation report to the European Parliament and the Council with the result of its’ assessment which will include an overview and analysis of all input received from citizens and stakeholders during the different consultation activities.

The consultation period ends on 21 December 2018.