EU countries with access to the Baltic Sea are developing legal measures that would allow them to carry out mass detentions of vessels allegedly belonging to Russia’s "shadow fleet". This was reported to Politico by European officials and diplomats, APA reports.
According to them, the new legislation will let them seize a vessel for the potential harm it may allegedly cause to the environment and for the purported damage to underwater cables and other critical undersea infrastructure. In the latter case, the authorities can use "piracy laws," the newspaper’s sources noted.
They disclosed that a number of EU countries, particularly Lithuania and Estonia, are also planning to develop a prescribed list of "credible" marine insurers: if a vessel is insured by a company not included in this list, it will be detained.
