We have just been informed of the first report concerning the causes of the Erika shipwreck by the Sea Accidents Investigation Office of the French Ministry of Construction, Transportation and Housing. The report was released on January 13.

The Erika accident illustrates the limitations of the current inspection system's operating procedures. In this connection, we share the concern of the French government, to which we had already expressed our commitment to playing an active role in efforts to rapidly help improve maritime safety. We believe that, over the medium term, improving maritime safety will require implementing international measures within the framework of the International Maritime Organization, possibly under the impetus of the European Union.

The report of the Sea Accidents Investigation Office states that "the ship broke apart most likely because of a structural weakness".

We would like to point out that inspection of a ship's structure is the responsibility of the classification society and cannot physically be conducted by a ship charterer, which has access to ships only when they are in commercial service, that is, when the tanks are filled with products or have not been degassed. A classification society carries out a structural inspection when a ship is in dry-dock for maintenance and during subsequent annual inspections.

In the case of the Erika, TOTALFINA, as part of its inspection procedure, had requested from RINA a certificate stating that the ship was in satisfactory structural condition. The classification society delivered this certificate.

Lastly, it should be recalled that a ship charterer currently cannot have access to the documents held by a classification society, since these documents are the property of the classification society and of the shipowner.

To a large extent, the recommendations in the Sea Accidents Investigation Office's intermediate report coincide with those made by TOTALFINA at the press conference held on January 5. With a view to improving maritime safety, the Group presented a number of recommendations to be implemented at the international level. The main recommendations were:

   - to strengthen the role of classification societies with an inspection of their quality, a more direct involvement in the inspection of ship structural integrity and more frequent inspections for older ships,

   - to reinforce in-port inspections,

   - to improve the flow of information about the condition of ships.

In the short term, we have already taken protective measures, including more in-depth research into the history of ship events and special attention as part of changes in classification societies, to strengthen the criteria for selecting the ships we charter