Every year, the Paris MoU releases its annual report, including safety information and rankings of flag states. While these figures pertain to merchant ships, pleasure craft owners registering their vessels recreationally can also learn something from them.

 

The Paris Mandate of Understanding is dedicated to improving global maritime safety through the implementation of a harmonized system of port state control. Initially, it was developed to focus on the rights of crew and sailors onboard but expanded to audit ship safety after the Amoco Cadiz wreck and oil spill disaster occurred just before the mandate was signed.

The Paris MoU currently comprises 28 member states, including most EU nations, the UK, Canada, and a handful of prominent Eastern European seafaring nations. However, all commercial vessels – both local and foreign – who dock at ports within Paris MoU member territories must submit to standardized inspections and regulations set out by the ILO and IMO.

The Paris MoU also ranks all flag states according to its operations. Naturally, the Paris MoU is also, therefore, one of the most reputable organizations to get statistics from regarding the regulatory efficacy of various flag states and the general safety of their vessels.

Paris MoU recently released its annual report for 2023, including numbered safety rankings of each flag state. You can find the most recent results on the Paris MoU website. To expand on these results, Lorrendraaier analysed all of Paris MoU’s flag state rankings from 2012 up until now to find out which flag states consistently rank as the safest in the world.

 

Why is it important to know about Paris MoU flag state rankings?

Paris MoU white-, grey-, and black-lists flag states according to the safety and efficacy of their regulation on their commercial ships. Being black- or grey-listed doesn’t necessarily ban a flag state’s vessels from sailing in Paris MoU territories, though Paris MoU does ban individual ships based on their condition.

Instead, commercial vessels sailing under grey- or black-listed flag state flags are just subject to more frequent inspections at Paris MoU member ports. In contrast, vessels sailing under a white-listed flag state’s flag are inspected fewer times, though vessel-specific complaints and issues still affect the likelihood of inspections and detainment.

In fact, the number of flag state vessels that are found unsafe and/or detained after an inspection directly affects the flag state’s Paris MoU list status and ranking. Hence why some flag states rank well one year and are on the grey- or black-list the next, or vice versa. After all, the regulation of its vessels lies with the flag state, not the Paris MoU, IMO, or ILO.

For example, Croatia has made strides, now ranking 37th and earning white-listed status after previously being grey-listed. Poland, a very popular flag state to register a pleasure craft, was also grey-listed for some years. In 2022, Poland was white-listed and rose to 38th from 53th place. In 2023, Poland dropped to 40th place but remains white-listed.

 

Top 50 Best and Worst Flag States From 2012 – 2023

With the above in mind, Lorrendraaier has gone one step further and analyzed 88 flag states’ performance, as per their Paris MoU safety rankings from 2012 up until 2023.

Based on the results, the following flag states are considered the top 50 consistently best-performing since 2012:

 

The Best Flag States

As we can see, the top-10 overall best-performing flag states (and their average ranking from 2012 – 2023), from top descending downward, are: Denmark (4), Norway (5), the Bahamas (7), the Netherlands (8), the UK (8), France (9), Hong Kong (9), Singapore (9), Italy (10), and Sweden (11).

With 18 spots in the top 25, European (and European territory) flag states perform comparatively better than the majority of non-European states. Of all the historically seafaring European nations, Spain dangles at the very bottom but is still well within the top 50.

The Worst Flag States

The 10 poorest-performing flag states globally (not listed above), from worst to least bad, are: Bolivia, Honduras, Congo, Dominica, Togo, Tanzania, Moldova, Cameroon, Comoros, and Cambodia.

Of which, the 5 poorest-performing European countries are: Moldova, Albania, Georgia, Ukraine, and Slovakia. None of the flag states above, both European and foreign, made it to our top 50. Additionally, many are or have recently been featured on Paris MoU’s grey and black lists.

Quite a few poorer-performing flag states, including Dominica, Honduras, Bolivia, Congo, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Libya, Curacoa, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Syrian Arab Republic, Mongolia, Tuvalu, Georgia, and Cambodia, also haven’t been ranked or inspected in the last 2 years or more – perhaps due to bans or sanctions – making accurately ranking them impossible.

 

Other Missing Flag States

Canada, Jersey (UK), and Bangladesh did rank well in 2023, but we only have a single year of ranking data available for them. So, they didn’t make it on our list because we couldn’t rank them for consistency.

Other notable flag states, such as Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Monaco, and San Marino are also missing from our list. These flag states don’t appear on Paris MoU’s lists or in its rankings at all, because either merchant vessels cannot register in the ships register or no merchant vessels were registered up to now.