Legislation must be introduced quickly to take stricter action against ships from the Russian shadow fleet that sail through the Dutch part of the North Sea under false flags. The outgoing cabinet announced this on Wednesday.
This concerns ‘systematic inspection’ [op zee]the “mandatory diversion to a designated anchorage for inspection” and, “in extreme cases, seizure” of a ship under a false flag, according to ministers Tieman (Infrastructure and Water Management, BBB) and Van Weel (Foreign Affairs, VVD) in a letter to the House. A parliamentary majority had requested stricter legislation in October. A bill will be drafted before the summer, the ministers said.
Within its territorial sea (TZ), a strip of up to twelve nautical miles (about 20 kilometers) from the coast, a state has extensive powers, but beyond that, in the so-called Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), the legal scope is limited.
This remains the case for ships sailing under a flag recognized by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). According to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, they retain the right to ‘innocent passage’ in the TZ and the ‘freedom of navigation’ in the EEZ. Jurisdiction over such a ship primarily belongs to the flag state, and only in exceptional situations – such as illegal discharge of oil – can the coastal state intervene within the EEZ.
But ships are increasingly sailing through the Dutch EEZ under false flags and with forged certificates to and from ports in Russia. These ships are often poorly insured or not insured and are in a poor state of maintenance, which poses major environmental and safety risks. Shadow fleet ships are also suspected of causing damage to undersea infrastructure, such as data and energy cables.
Fraudulent flag state
This recently included ships that flew the flag of Aruba. It does not have its own international shipping register and by definition cannot be a flag state. Research platform Follow the Money unveiled in July last year that dozens of shadow fleet ships flying fraudulent flags from Caribbean parts of the Netherlands are trying to circumvent international sanctions. In addition to Aruba, this concerns Sint Maarten and Curaçao. Curaçao does have its own shipping register.
There are countless other countries and island states worldwide that are fraudulently presented as flag states by shadow fleet vessels.
In order to take more robust action against such ships, the ministers say they want to model themselves on French legislation, among other things. The French Navy, with British assistance, detained a tanker allegedly flying a false flag in the western part of the Mediterranean, outside its own TZ, on Sunday. took the ship to Marseilles and arrested the captain, a 58-year-old Indian.
The tanker, Grinch, was flying the flag of the Comoros and had left the Russian port of Murmansk in early January. In October last year, French authorities detained a shadow fleet tanker, the Boracay, on the Brittany coast, which had been linked to drone flights in Danish airspace, because the ship was said to have been behaving suspiciously in Danish waters at the time.
Eagle S
In October last year, a Finnish court declared that it had no jurisdiction in the case against three officers of the shadow fleet tanker Eagle S, which allegedly deliberately damaged sea cables with a dragging anchor at the end of 2024 on behalf of Russia. Finland raised the tanker and arrested the three. But the court in Helsinki said it had no jurisdiction in the case because the incident happened in the Finnish EEZ. According to the court, the case falls under the jurisdiction of the Cook Islands, where the ship is registered, or the country of nationality of the defendants: two Georgians and one Indian.
Within the EEZ of some European coastal states there are areas where the authorities have more powers, including for the inspection of papers. Those are so-called Mandatory Ship Reporting Systemsor MRS arean. These are located in major straits such as the Channel, the Great Belt (Denmark) and the Strait of Gibraltar. Ships there are obliged to send their documents to the authorities.
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