The Memorandum of Understanding for the Transport of Dangerous
Goods on Ro-Ro Ships in the Baltic is a multilateral agreement on
the transport of dangerous goods in packaged form between Denmark,
Germany, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden
that has existed for more than 20 years. Poland, Estonia, Latvia
and Lithuania were not part of the MoU from the beginning but have
ratified it in recent years. Lithuania signed the MoU at the last
conference (2002), which was held in Riga, Latvia.
The purpose of the MoU is to facilitate the transport of
dangerous goods on ro-ro ships in the BalticSea by departing from
the rules that normally apply to international maritime transport,
i.e., the IMDG Code (International Maritime Dangerous Goods
Code).
The MoU was developed because the differences (which were much
greater in the early 1980s than they are today) between land
transport rules (the regulations for road and rail transports are
ADR and RID, respectively) and maritime transport rules caused
problems when transport was to rapidly switch from land to maritime
transport. For instance, the differences between the regulations
meant that a transport of dangerous goods from Helsinki to Hamburg
must change the documentation and marking of the packages as well
as the cargo transport unit six times because the transport route
included three maritime transports (Helsinki – Stockholm,
Helsingborg – Helsingör and Rödby –
Puttgarden) with intermediate land transports.
The goal was thus to create an agreement that would efficiently
combine the rules to enable transport of dangerous goods on certain
short routes in the Baltic Sea while maintaining safety but
eliminating the need to relabel or reload goods between modes of
transport.
The MoU contains both operative and technical parts. The operative
part means that the dangerous goods can essentially be classified,
packaged, consolidated, marked, labelled, documented and
loaded/unloaded according to land transport rules when transported
in specific areas in the Baltic Sea (now referred to as Low Wave
Height Areas). The technical part has to do with the standards the
ship must meet to be allowed to transport dangerous goods. Ships
must be equipped and constructed according to the international
standards provided in SOLAS (The International Convention for the
Safety of Life at Sea).
The MoU has been successively adapted to changing regulations
over the years. The current rules in international regulations
(ADR, RID and the IMDG Code) are, as said, much more similar than
they were when the MoU came into existence. The various
international organisations are now working actively to harmonise
and adapt regulations to each other in order to facilitate
multimodal transport.