The scope of the EMSA QMS covers all services provided by the Agency to external customers. These services derive from the Agency’s core tasks, as stipulated in the Founding Regulation and they are detailed in the EMSA 5-years strategy and associated annual SPDs. For the purpose of QMS certification, the scope is described by the following main activities:

• • providing technical and scientific assistance to the EU Member States and the Commission in the development and implementation of EU legislation on maritime safety, security, and prevention of and response to pollution by ships;
  • providing technical, scientific and operational assistance to EU initiatives linked to the European Green Deal, the European Maritime Security Strategy and the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy, as well as maritime transport administrative simplification and digitalisation;
  • monitoring the implementation of EU legislation through visits and inspections;
  • building capacity of national competent authorities;
  • developing, managing, maintaining and operating maritime digital information and analytical services to support implementation, monitoring and enforcement tasks;
  • supporting Member States with surveillance and emission detection services, based on state of art technologies which include satellite imagery and remotely piloted aircraft systems;
  • carrying out operational preparedness, detection and response tasks with respect to pollution caused by ships and marine pollution by oil and gas installations, including assistance to third countries sharing a regional sea basin with the Union;
  • supporting national authorities responsible and relevant EU bodies for coast guard functions in their daily work which include safety, security, environmental protection, law enforcement, maritime border and fisheries control.
  • providing technical assistance, as regards relevant legal acts of the Union, including, as relevant, access to operational tools developed by the Agency, to States applying for accession to the Union;
  • offering cooperation and assistance in the fields of maritime safety and security, prevention of pollution from ships and marine environmental issues to European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries.

For the sake of clarity, the above activities are translated into QMS processes associated to the EMSA organisational structure. Each process is described in a Process Statement (PS) which is listed and further described in Section 5 of the EMSA QMS Manual. The PSs distribution per department only indicates where the ownership of the process is, but depending on the type of the process, it can be applicable to a specific department or to the entire organisation.