MEPs vote down EU approval for two Alang shipbreaking yards

The European Parliament's environment committee has voted against adding two Indian shipbreaking yards to the EU's approved recycling list, stalling what would have been a first for the subcontinent. Shree Ram Vessel Scrap and YSI Recyclers, both in the Alang-Sosiya hub in Gujarat, now face a full Parliament vote later in November.

The European Commission had given the yards preliminary backing after inspections against the EU Ship Recycling Regulation. Their inclusion would have made them the first facilities on the Indian subcontinent to join the European list — a meaningful shift for owners of EU-flagged tonnage, who currently must scrap those vessels only at approved sites.

The objection, backed this week, rests on the beaching method itself. Ships are dismantled on tidal shorelines, and MEPs questioned whether pollution and hazardous waste can be controlled that way. Downstream waste handling drew scrutiny too: scrap steel flows to local re-rolling mills that have never been assessed against EU industrial emissions standards.

Campaigners' environmental monitoring added weight. It showed elevated levels of copper, chromium, cadmium and mercury around Alang-Sosiya. Not the kind of neighbourhood reading that comforts a regulator.

What does this change for shipowners?

In the short run, not much — and that's the point. EU-flagged commercial ships covered by the regulation still have to be dismantled at facilities on the European list. Approval of the Indian yards would have widened options and altered competition with existing approved facilities in Europe and Turkey. Denied, the status quo holds.

European shipping had lobbied hard the other way. Industry association ECSA urged MEPs to back the Commission, noting both yards had undergone extensive inspections and been found compliant. ECSA secretary general Sotiris Raptis warned that rejecting facilities that passed the assessment process would damage the regulation's own credibility. A fair argument, on its face: rules that approve nobody please nobody.

The NGOs see it differently. Ingvild Jenssen, executive director of NGO Shipbreaking Platform, said: "Today's vote in the European Parliament sends a strong political message to the European Commission." Approving facilities despite shortcomings found during inspections, she argued, would undermine the regulation's environmental objectives.

Is extra capacity even needed?

Campaigners and recycling industry representatives contend no. They point to more than 2m light displacement tonnes of combined annual capacity at facilities already on the EU list — a volume they say comfortably covers recent recycling of EU-flagged and EU-owned ships. Environmental groups add a harder line: beaching operations simply cannot contain hazardous materials well enough to deserve EU recognition.

So the industry's capacity argument — more yards, more choice, less bottleneck — collides with a counter-claim that the existing list already does the job. One of these positions will look shrewder in five years, depending on how many European ships actually head for scrap.

Not the end of the road

The committee vote is not final. The objection goes before the full European Parliament later in November, and it does not force the Commission to withdraw its proposal. Member states also get a say in the approval process. That means Alang's EU ambitions are bruised, not buried.

For shipowners planning end-of-life strategy, the practical takeaway is patience. Until the plenary vote and the member-state process play out, approved capacity stays where it is, and the price of compliance stays with it.