Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2018/2032 of 20 November 2018 amending Commission Regulation (EC) No 416/2007 concerning the technical specifications for Notices to Skippers

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

Having regard to Directive 2005/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 7 September 2005 on harmonised river information services (RIS) on inland waterways in the Community^f1, and in particular Article 5, paragraph 1, point (c), thereof,

Whereas:

Commission Regulation (EC) No 416/2007^f2 should be updated, further refined and clarified taking into account the technological progress and experience gained from the application of Regulation (EC) No 416/2007.

The technical specifications for Notices to Skippers should be based on the technical principles set out in Annex II to Directive 2005/44/EC.

In order to improve safety of navigation, Notices to Skippers should be extended to include a new type of message dedicated to weather-related notices.

The reference tables related to gauges should be eliminated from the Annex to Regulation (EC) No 416/2007, because the reference data contained therein, such as reference values for low and high water level, are dynamic. Such data should be included and maintained in the European Reference Data Management System operated by the Commission.

There is a need to improve the consistency of editing and application development in order to create services with a higher level of interoperability. Therefore, Encoding Guides for editors and application developers should be included in the technical specifications as Appendix A and B to the Annex.

Data exchange between the authorities is recommended according to Regulation (EC) No 416/2007. In order to improve such data exchange, specifications related to the data exchange should be set out in Appendix D to the Annex in order to allow Member States make their systems interoperable.

In order to ensure that Member States are able to encode Notices to Skippers messages in a consistent and interoperable manner, the Reference tables included in Appendix E should be improved. For this purpose, new codes should be defined in a new Reference table containing harmonised search interface labels for the graphical user interface. Moreover, new tags, values and codes should be added to existing Reference tables and redundant items should be removed.

The revised technical specifications should ensure that the reference tables in Appendix E are also available electronically in the European Reference Data Management System operated by the European Commission.

In accordance with Article 12(2) of Directive 2005/44/EC, in order to comply with Article 4 of this Directive, Member States should take the necessary measures to implement the requirements laid down in this Regulation not later than 30 months after its entry into force.

Regulation (EC) No 416/2007 should therefore be amended accordingly.

The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the Committee referred to in Article 11 of Directive 2005/44/EC,

HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION: