Only 5% of the tonnage of ships owned or flags of the European Union is demolished and recycled in European shipyards. This is highlighted by the new study entitled " Capacity to Recycle Ships in the EU - Assessing state of play and future opportunities" of the NGO Shipbreaking Platform and Transport & Environment (T&E), which updates a similar investigation conducted in 2018 and which denounces how the vast majority of The majority of European ships are scrapped in precarious conditions in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh while recycling plants located in the EU operate below their capacity which is absolutely sufficient to recycle all ships EU flagged and owned by the EU. The study specifies, in fact, that in 2020, the year with the highest number of ships dismantled worldwide, EU installations had a total recycling capacity of 2.10 million tons of empty displacement, while the total number of ships of EU properties dismantled that year amounted to 1.37 million empty displacement. Yet, in that very year, the 71% of the European-owned tonnage had been dismantled on the beaches of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The document explains that between 2019 and 2025, 706 EU-flagged ships and/or owned by the EU and that only 22% of these units has been recycled in facilities located in the EU, such as just 5% of the total tonnage. Almost half has been scrapped in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, accounting for 66% of the total tonnage. The remaining ships were dismantled mainly in Turkish shipbreaking yards.

In the new report, Shipbreaking Platform and T&E recall that EU Waste Shipment Regulation prohibits exports to non-OECD countries of ships that become waste in the waters and that the EU Ship Recycling Regulation requires that EU-flagged ships be scrapped in approved by the EU. The two associations denounce that, in reality, the majority of the EU-owned fleet continues to be demolished on non-compliant construction sites in Southeast Asia, with shipowners who reflag their ships or declare fraudulently to continue naval operations to evade the restrictions on the export of waste. The two associations point out that between 2019 and 2025 as many as 102 ships changed EU flag with another flag shortly before the demolition to avoid the restrictions imposed by the Union.

According to Shipbreaking Platform and T&E, this is not is only a problem from an environmental point of view, "but represents a serious failure of the EU's industrial strategy which on paper favors strategic resilience and autonomy of materials, while in reality it allows precious steel is dispersed to third markets. The EU - denounced Benedetta Mantoan, Policy Manager at Shipbreaking Platform - talks about reducing dependence on imported critical materials, yet it allows its owners to evade regulations and export millions of tons of recoverable steel that could be worked at the national level. This is not autonomy strategic ".

Specifying that up to 95% of the weight of a ship can be be recycled as high-quality scrap steel, a previous report by the Shipbreaking Platform had concluded that nearly 12,000 EU-owned ships will reach the end of their life cycle over the next decade and that this It could produce up to 12 million tons of steel per year.

The new study recalls that shipping companies based in in the EU they control 34.5% of the world's tonnage, totalling 570.5 million gross tonnage distributed over 22,403 ships in 2025 according to data from the European Shipowners' Association ECSA. However, only about 15% of the world's fleet is effectively registered under the flag of an EU state.

The Shipbreaking Platform and T&E report also looks at the future. A forecast analysis conducted together with Sandbag and at the University of Tuscia, on a sample of almost 12,000 EU ships older than ten years, indicates the 30s as the critical decade for recycling: it is estimated that a peak of 600-700 annual demolitions, with 12-15 million tons of steel scrap produced each year, concentrated mainly between 2033 and 2037. The report explains that high sea freight rates, the diversions of routes caused by the Red Sea crisis and the demand for old oil tankers for routes subject to sanctions until now kept ships in service that should have already been simply postponing the problem. Here emerges a Second paradox: the current average capacity of the plants would be sufficient for the EU fleet alone flying the European flag, but not because of the expected wave of demolitions by the entire European-owned fleet. Hence the appeal of the report to invest in capacity expansion now compliant, rather than opening the list of recycling facilities authorised by the EU to Asian installations, a practice that is also banned in China and the United Arab Emirates, and that the government itself Indian government, in its "Maritime India Vision 2030" plan, aims to replace with the use of dry docks.

The report also points to some positive developments in the industry of European ship recycling. In the Netherlands, Marine Metals has obtained a multi-million dollar investment from Sojitz Corporation, Jansen Recycling Group, SPDG and Victrix to develop a technology of automated wire cutting. In Norway, the Oppsirk project of Nordic Circles has signed a 1.3 billion kroner agreement with Höegh Autoliners to transform up to eight decommissioned ships into certified building materials. In Germany the fifteenth edition of the EU list of ship recycling facilities has including the first German plant, in Emden ( of 27 February 2026). In Belgium, the Galloo shipyard in Ghent will benefit the extension of the Terneuzen lock, while in Scotland the Port of Kishorn is expanding its dry dock thanks to a £42 million investment.

However, for the authors of the report, the responsibilities of the failure to use European ship recycling facilities falls largely on shipowners. According to Shipbreaking Platform and T&E, The obstacle to responsible ship recycling has never been capacity problem, but the systematic choice of owners to maximize the residual value of the ships by unloading the real environmental and social costs on workers and communities Global South. The wave of demolitions expected in the next decade represents, according to the study, an opportunity that Europe cannot afford to waste, both for environmental and and for the strategic autonomy and decarbonisation of the steel industry.