The consequences of the Erika disaster in numerical terms are quite catastrophic: 400 kilometres of the coast have been polluted for many years to come and the once flourishing tourist industry is gone.
There is real anger among the people of France that this had to happen to them. Their anger is made worse when it seems nobody can be held responsible and when all the authorities concerned seem intent on just saying they were following the rules.
A delegation of French MPs visited Malta in the past days specifically to explain the anger of the French people to the Maltese authorities.
Cloaked in the diplomatic language of international relations there was a clear message linked to the fact that France will hold the presidency of the European Union from July to December, at a crucial stage of Malta's negotiations with the EU.
The four MPs - rapporteur Jean-Yves Le Drian, Louis Guedon, Jacqueline Lazard and Jean-Michel Marchand - yesterday met the media to explain their mission and their message.
They made clear that they will be going back to France convinced that the government of Malta is going to upgrade both its regulations and the enforcement of the regulations.
M. Le Drian said that after the Erika catastrophe, the French National Assembly decided to set up a commission of inquiry made up of 30 MPs from all parliamentary groups. The commission is due to report to Parliament by mid-July.
The commission is completely independent of the French government so that it can investigate the catastrophe in freedom. It does not substitute the judicial inquiry into the disaster, nor the other commissions of inquiry set up by the different authorities both in France and elsewhere.
What lessons can be learnt from this disaster on a government level and on an international organisation level, such as the International Maritime Organisation, so that such accidents do not happen again in the future?
The commission of inquiry works like this: every Tuesday and Wednesday in the French Parliament the commission interviews responsible officials from the various sectors involved, not just from France, but also from outside the country.
Next week it will interview the President of Total, while last week it interviewed numerous UK insurance companies. Fifty interviews in all will be held.
The commission has also travelled across France to find out the state of affairs: it has been to Toulon and Brest, Marseilles and Le Havre.
It has also travelled abroad: It went to London to interview IMO officials; to Brussels to meet the commission officers responsible for this subject; the US to see what the US did after the Exxon Valdes tragedy and Portugal since this country holds the presidency of the EU.
A delegation from this parliamentary commission is now in Malta. It was quite natural that they would be visiting Malta, said M. Le Drian: Erika was flying the Maltese flag, Malta has the fourth-largest fleet in the world and Malta is applying to join the EU.
"We came here without resentment," said M. Le Drian, but with a great wish to speak openly, to tell the Maltese authorities how the French people feel about the tragedy which has blackened 400 kilometres of coast.
This is not the first tragedy to have hit this part of the French coast, it is actually the seventh.
The greater part of the world's shipping passes the French coast: most do not enter any French port, but if any disaster occurs, it is the French coast which suffers the consequences.
The delegation explained all this to the Maltese authorities and it felt they understand the consequences of such a disaster. The members also feel that the government of Malta is about to take the necessary measures to avoid there being such an accident in the future.
It is hopeful things will change due to Malta's decision not to accept under its flag ships which are more than 25 years old.
Malta's application to join the EU, in their opinion, is a good chance both for Malta and the EU because Malta has a very important fleet of ships. It is thus important that Malta ensures that its maritime law is handled properly.
The delegation will be coming back to Malta after it has concluded its report. It still has a number of questions to ask the Maltese authorities before it submits its final report.
M. Le Drian made it very clear that the commission is not out to find a culprit for the Erika disaster, but rather looks ahead at enabling France and the EU to have the very best regulations so that such disasters will not happen again.
He seemed to say that France and the EU have given up on the IMO: this world body takes too long to get an agreement on any change. When the Exxon Valdes tragedy occured, the US took unilateral steps and today its regulation is very sharp. The Erika would have never been allowed in a US port, M. Le Drian said.
The EU seems set to take a similar decision: it seems to be going ahead with its own regulations which may come into effect by the end of this year. These regulations will affect all ships which approach any EU waters.
Later on, M. Le Drian explained one of these proposals: it would forbid any tanker of over 15 years, which has had two negative reports from any port, to enter any EU territorial waters.
M. Le Drian based his fundamental assumption on a UN convention to which Malta too is a signatory. This UN Convention states that any country which has a fleet must have a structural link with each and every ship registered by it.Some countries may say their link with their ships is through the crew. But Malta is so small it has no crewmen on board its ships.
Other countries may say their link is through the capital they have invested in ships. But in the case of Malta none of the capital which owns the ships on the Malta registration is owned by Maltese.
So what is the structural link between Malta and its fleet?
Malta's link is its maritime tradition and also the fact that its fleet is at the service of Europe. So it is in the interest of Malta to have a very high quality of shipping regulation.
While in Malta, the committee had its disagreements with the Maltese authorities. The disagreement itself is quite instructive.
When a ship comes to Malta to be classified under the Maltese flag, it brings with it its certification from a certification society. The ship owners would have paid for such a certification exercise.
The practice is that Malta blindly accepts this certification with no checking done at all. But the interests of Malta as the flag country and that of the ship owners and of the certification company are divergent.
To be serious, the Maltese authorities must check the ship's certification either through having technical experts to check the ship in the name of Malta, or else through checking the ship by a different certification company.
In simpler terms, a Rina-certified ship can be checked by a Lloyds survey.
The disagreement centred around the fact that this is not the way that Maltese procedures are carried out.
The delegation touched upon, but not in great detail, the social aspect too.
It is not just the technical requirements which are sometimes lacking in ships registered by some jurisdictions. In many cases there is a social deficit in that either the crew is not treated or paid well or that the crew is from one country and the captain from another.
This is not what happened in the Erika's case: In that case both captain and crew were Indian. What they failed to understand was that they were sailing on a very dangerous ship and that the storms in the northern seas are very much more violent than the ones in the seas they are accustomed to.
