Maritime traffic, Coast Guard monitoring: 5.4 billion information provided to the EU
Maritime traffic monitoring data from the MAREΣ - Mediterranean AIS Regional Exchange System - platform presented in 2025
Key points
Almost ninety billion pieces of information managed, of which 5.4 billion provided by the Italian Coast Guard. These are the maritime traffic monitoring data handled in 2025 by the MAREΣ - Mediterranean AIS Regional Exchange System platform.
22nd meeting of the Mediterranean Expert Working Group
Figures presented at the headquarters of the Reale Yacht Club Canottieri Savoia for the 22nd meeting of the Mediterranean Expert Working Group organised by the General Command of the Corps of Harbour Offices - Coast Guard together with the Naples Maritime Directorate.
During the meeting, co-chaired by the Maritime Director of the Neapolitan Coast Guard, Admiral Inspector Giuseppe Aulicino, and the Head of the Maritime Digital Unit of the European Maritime Safety Agency, Greek Lazaros Aichmalotidis, and attended by representatives from 14 countries, the results achieved in 2025, any problems encountered and future prospects were analysed.
MAREΣ platform
The regional system for the exchange of information on maritime traffic implemented and managed by the Italian Coast Guard, after its first years of operation, has taken the name MAREΣ, where 'the S is indicated by the Greek letter which in mathematical language means sum to indicate how the regional system is nothing other than the sum of the contributions of the individual 20 states currently participating'. Not only that. Because almost 4 billion pieces of information were managed by the platform and fed back to the EU SafeSeaNet.
The SafeSeaNet network
SafeSeaNet is a network, set up and operated by EMSA, in which information acquired through the VTMIS (Vessel Traffic Monitoring and Information System) of EU Member States is exchanged. It is part of the innovations introduced following the December 1999 environmental disaster along the coast of Britannia (France) caused by the sinking of the Maltese-flagged oil tanker ERIKA. The European Union launched several regulatory packages, called Erika's Package, providing for the establishment of a Community Maritime Safety Agency, the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) based in Lisbon, and the implementation of a complex maritime traffic monitoring system through which the maritime scenario in the EU's areas of interest could be captured.
