EU transport ministers were unwilling to make a reference to the criminal penalties in a draft directive on pollution, which intends to prevent environmental disasters similar to the spill from the Prestige oil tanker last year which devastated swathes of France and Spain's coasts.

However their position was not shared by EU Transport Commissioner Loyola de Palacio, who wants the penalties to be made clear in the draft directive.

"There was enormous reluctance" on the part of the ministers to make the reference in the draft text of the directive, Palacio told a news conference.

She accused the ministers of making an "about-turn" after EU leaders publicly committed themselves to fighting pollution from ships following the Prestige disaster.

Her spokesman, Gilles Gantelet, said the stand taken by the ministers runs the risk of preventing any decision being taken to create the criminal penalties for polluters in the bloc.

The ministers have argued it is not within their legal jurisdiction to make a reference to the criminal sanctions in the draft directive, which must be kept for a later version which would be adopted unanimously and not through qualified majority voting.

But Gantelet said: "People who support the idea of a unanimous vote run the risk that one country will block and there will never be these penal sanctions against the vandals of the sea."

The draft directive being discussed by the ministers aims at creating harmonised European standards for stopping pollution from ships, by harmonising the definition of illegal practices.

French President Jacques Chirac, along with the prime ministers of Spain and Portugal have been at the forefront of calls for criminal penalties, urging EU-wide action as soon as possible.

TERRA.WIRE