The Financial Regulations of the European Maritime Safety Agency lay down detailed rules for the implementation of the financial regulation, as applicable to the budget of the European Maritime Safety Agency. These rules cover such areas as budgetary approval, accounting principles and procurement procedures.
EMSA's budgets, in common with EU institutions in general, follow an 'annuality principle': that is, they are approved each year by the Administrative board, in cooperation with the European Commission and subject to European Parliament approval.
In 2004, a separate multi-annual funding instrument - an 'envelope' of 154 million euros from 2007-2013 - was approved for anti-pollution measures.
EMSA's Annual budgets since 2006, in million €
Previous budgets
- 2006 (see Annual Report 2006): 25.394
- 2007 (see Annual Report 2007): 34.912
- 2008( see Annual Report 2008): 38.495
- 2009 (see Annual Report 2009): 46.732
Previous and preliminary draft budgets
- 2010 (work programme budget):
53.791 (commitment appropriations)
- 2011 (preliminary draft budget):
56.598 (commitment appropriations, preliminary draft approved at Administative Board Meeting, March 2010)
In terms of the various factors explaining budgetary increments in the period since 2007, major developments have been:
- an increase in Agency staff to carry out tasks (from 150 in 2007 to 230 today);
- the setting up of the oil pollution vessel response network;
- tasks resulting in from the Third Maritime Safety Package;
- cooperation/enlargement linked tasks (Candidate, Third Countries);
- the development of new services (particularly in the area of vessel traffic monitoring, such as new versions of SafeSeaNet, and the EU LRIT Data Centre);
- provision of 24/7/365 services from the fourth quarter of 2009 (a move to three shifts effectively tripled the size of the Maritime Support Services operator team).
A number of other areas for expanding/developing EMSA's activities have been proposed in a recent 5-Year Strategy document, and the European Commission has proposed amending the Agency's founding regulation to embrace new tasks. After many years of growth since 2003, the Agency is now in a consolidation phase: it is expected that over the coming years, the budget and headcount of EMSA are likely to remain relatively stable, with any major increases linked to new tasks.
Financial Regulations 
Tagline: Quality shipping, safer seas, cleaner oceans