Black Sea MOU: Regional Specificities

The Black Sea MOU applies the same international instruments (SOLAS, MARPOL, MLC 2006, STCW) as the other regional PSC regimes, with its own targeting and reporting system independent of the Paris MoU. The region took part in the 2025 Concentrated Inspection Campaign on Ballast Water Management, conducted from 1 September to 30 November 2025.

Where the power to come on board comes from. Not from the Memorandum. A regional MoU is an administrative arrangement between Administrations: it harmonises how inspections are done, it does not create the right to inspect. That right sits in the control articles of the Conventions, which resolution A.1206(34) — Procedures for Port State Control, 2025 — lists one by one at its paragraph 1.4. For SOLAS there are four regulations, not one: I/19, IX/6.2 (ISM), XI-1/4 and XI-2/9 (ISPS). For MARPOL, Articles 5 and 6 plus one provision per Annex: reg. 11 of Annex I, reg. 16.9 of II, reg. 9 of III, reg. 14 of IV, reg. 9 of V and reg. 10 of VI. The “reg. 9 of III” surprises anyone who opens Annex III in the text adopted by res. MEPC.193(61), where port State control on operational requirements is Regulation 8: res. MEPC.246(66), in force from 1 January 2016, inserted a new Regulation 1 “Definitions” into it and provided that “the subsequent regulations are renumbered accordingly”. Since 2016 that provision has been Regulation 9, and that is the number A.1206(34) carries. Then Article 21 of the Load Lines Convention 1966 as modified by the 1988 Protocol, Article X of STCW, Article 12 of TONNAGE 1969, Article 11 of AFS 2001 and Article 9 of BWM 2004. For the MLC, an ILO and not an IMO instrument, the basis is Regulation 5.2.1 with Standard A5.2.1.

The practical consequence is that challenging an inspection on the ground that your flag State is not party to the Memorandum leads nowhere: the inspector is not acting under the Memorandum, but under the control article of the Convention the flag State has ratified.