Combating Somali piracy: the EU's Naval Operation Atalanta, 12th report of session 2009-10, report with evidence

The EU's Operation Atalanta has made a strong contribution to combating piracy however there are a number of areas that need improvement and require action. Suggestions that the Committee puts forward in this report include: more surveillance aircraft to support naval vessels and their crews; insistence that the World Food Programme charter faster, larger and more modern vessels and that it should be a condition of the award of a WFP contract that the flag state allow these vessels to carry Atalanta military forces on board; that military personnel placed on commercial shipping should be given specialised training; and that the insurance industry take more responsibility for ensuring that commercial shipping transiting the area comply with procedure. The Committee also agrees with the increasingly robust action taken against pirates by Atalanta forces and they welcome the EU's agreements with Kenya and the Seychelles to prosecute pirates. They believe that there will be no solution to the problem of the piracy without a solution to the root causes of the conflict on land in Somalia and are concerned that if the piracy problems of the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean are robustly tackled that there will be copy-cat piracy elsewhere.