. Port waste reception facilities This perennial topic will probably remain on IMO's agenda well into the next millennium, because too many nations, most of which have accepted commitments as signatories to the MARPOL Convention, still fail to provide port waste reception facilities for visiting ships. Yet some countries have succeeded where the majority have failed, principally by adopting the 'no special fee' principle, whereby the cost of using reception facilities is assimilated into normal port dues. For a variety of reasons, including the fact that in many countries port authorities are autonomous, years of discussion have failed to devise a universally acceptable system. The IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee has therefore once again embarked on an attempt to produce a set of guidelines which will succeed in impressing on governments their obligations to provide the reception facilities needed by ships to meet their own corresponding obligations under MARPOL. The latest guidelines are expected to be put to the IMO Assembly in November 1999. ICS welcomes this opening up of the debate, and encourages IMO to pursue the matter further. Ideally, there should be changes to MARPOL to make the duties of states crystal clear as to what their ports should provide. Unlike the specific requirements applying to ships, the obligation on ports expresses no more than a good intention, with no penalty for failing to comply. The fact that the European Commission is working on a directive to establish mandatory obligations - both on ships and on ports, with penalties for non-compliance - is therefore welcome as a potential template for future global use. .