EMSA Annual Overview of Marine Casualties and Incidents (2024)

For 2023, key indicators such as the number of occurrences, ships lost, fatalities, and injuries remained at or below the average levels observed throughout the reporting period from 2014 to 2023.

The Annual Overview of Marine Casualties and Incidents offers a comprehensive high-level analysis of marine casualties and incidents reported by EU Member States to the European Electronic Database (EMCIP), established under Directive 2009/18/EC.

This publication presents statistics on marine casualties and incidents which involved ships flying the flag of one of the EU Member States, or occurred within EU Member States’ territorial sea or internal waters as defined in UNCLOS, or involved substantial interests of EU Member States, as reported by Member States in the EU database for maritime incidents EMCIP (European Marine Casualty Information Platform).

In this document, EU and EU Member States are the 27 EU Member States plus the EEA EFTA States (Iceland and Norway) to which the Directive applies. The figures from EMCIP database cover the period from 1st of January 2014 to 31st of December 2023. To ensure reliable figures, EMSA and the reporting Member States regularly implement actions aimed at enhancing the data quality of the dataset. In 2023, most of the indicators, such as the number of occurrences, ships lost, fatalities or injuries, are near or below the average values for the entire period from 2014 to 2023.

In 2023, 2676 marine casualties and incidents were reported, which represent an increase of 49 marine casualties and incidents compared to 2022 and a decrease of 66 marine casualties and incidents compared to 2021. The total number of marine casualties and incidents reported in the period from 2014 to 2023 was 26595 with an annual average of 2660.

The number of casualties and incidents in 2023 is 0.6% higher than the annual average and 0.7% higher than the pre-pandemic average of 2658 occurrences. After a peak of 106 very serious casualties reported in 2018 and a total of 77 in 2019, the number of very serious marine casualties was 52 in 2020, 61 in 2021, 57 in 2022 and 45 in 2023, indicating a downward trend.

In 2023, 2896 ships were involved in marine casualties and incidents, an increase of 70 ships compared to 2022 but a decrease of 74 ships compared to 2021. There is a downward trend in cargo ships and fishing vessels.

To establish objective comparisons between the different ship types, ratios were calculated between the number of marine casualties and incidents involving each ship type and its corresponding fleet size. This year, the use of new data sources has allowed to calculate occurrence indicators for ships flying EU Member State flag (EU-27 + Norway & Iceland), while in previous years this calculation was limited to ships flying EU-27 Member State flag.

The fleet data available allows to calculate occurrence indicators for fishing vessels with a length overall above 15 meters, cargo ships, passenger ships and service ships, all of them with an IMO number and flying an EU Member State flag. The average ship occurrence indicator in the period from 2014 to 2023 was 131, with a peak of 139 in 2019, a minimum of 115 in 2020 and 134 in 2023.

Both passenger ships and cargo ships had the higher average ship occurrence indicators, 250 and 147 respectively. The indicators in 2023 have stabilised compared to the previous year. Service ships and fishing vessels had the lowest indicator, with an average of 63 over the period from 2014 to 2023, with an increasing trend in that period. With regard to the area where casualties and incidents occur, from 2014 to 2023, internal waters (port area and other) accounted for more than half of the reported marine casualties and incidents followed by events occurring in territorial sea and high sea.

Data for 2023 are consistent with the trends for the entire period from 2014 to 2023. Looking at the segment of the voyage where incident happen, from 2014 to 2023, the departure phase presented the lowest percentage of ships involved in marine casualties and incidents, 8.2%, while ‘en route’ segment represented the highest percentage, 44.1%. Territorial seas of the EU Member States in North Atlantic, with an average of 22.5% of the marine casualties and incidents, and territorial seas of the EU Member States in in Mediterranean Sea, with an average of 17.9% of the marine casualties and incidents, were the geographical areas with the highest number of occurrences, with the exception of passenger ships where the greatest number of occurrences in territorial seas of the EU Member States happened in the Mediterranean and Baltic Sea.

Following a decline in the traffic density across Europe in 2020 due to the pandemic, which affected more passenger ships than cargo ships and fishing vessels, traffic density values had been recovering since 2021. Between 2014 and 2023, EU Accident Investigative Bodies launched 1196 investigations and made public 1001 safety investigation reports. In 2023, 75 investigations were reported to have been launched, meaning a decrease of 21.9% in comparison with 2022. The number of investigations launched has been declining year by year since 2018.