These concluding remarks will provide a summary of recommendations that have been made concerning the formulation of an optimal liability and compensation scheme for offshore-related risks at the end of the preceding chapters. Hence, in order to avoid repetition, we will now summarize the earlier recommendations and refer in footnotes to the specific places where the motivation for those recommendations has been provided. The advantage is that all recommendations are brought together, while the reader can consult the text referred to in the footnotes to obtain the detailed motivation for the specific recommendations. The recommendations we will formulate to an important extent follow the order of the chapters in this book.

General

1. • Data on incidents related to damage resulting from offshore oil and gas activities are either difficult to obtain or not publically disclosed. It is recommendable that an institution at the European Union level should centrally collect those data, also in order to increase the insurability of offshore-related damage.

2. • It is recommendable to urge Member States to invite the offshore oil and gas producers within their jurisdictions to collaborate in the provision of those data to the central European institution.

3. • It is recommendable that the European Union take the initiative (eventually via a specialized UN agency or other institutions) to come to an international agreement especially focusing on offshore-related incidents with a trans-boundary character.

4. • In order to promote (international) risk pooling by industry, mandatory safety standards should be implemented guaranteeing a minimum level of offshore safety in the European Union. Safety regulation should play a more important role than liability rules in the prevention of offshore-related risks.

5. • Given the higher technical knowledge of industry on optimal safety standards, the European Union could promote (inter alia, via guidance notes) industry agreements (eventually with national regulators) on targets and safety standards but striving for highly harmonized EU-wide safety standards.