French flag ranks first on the Paris MoU
The high quality of the implementation of maritime safety standards on board ships flying the French flag has once again been highlighted.
The French flag ranked 1st out of 69 by the Paris MoU
The Paris Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Port State Control is an international agreement (signed in 1982) to which 27 States are parties. The MoU provides for the harmonisation of port state control (PSC) procedures in order to improve compliance with international maritime safety standards by ships calling at States Parties.
Each year, the Port State Control Committee (PSCC) updates the 3 lists published by the Paris MoU:
* white list: quality flags, whose ships are subject to a very low detention rate during PSC;
- Grey list: flags with average performance;
- black list: flags whose ships pose a risk to safety at sea and which may be banned from certain ports of call.
For 2025, the French flag is moving up in the new ranking published by the Paris MoU: as in all previous years, it is on the white list, now in 1st place (remember that in 2024, France was in 11th place and in 2023 in 17th place).