Malaga, Spain
Spain and France have agreed on tough new guidelines for oil-tanker safety that they hope will prevent disasters like last month’s wreck of the Prestige. The ship went down in a storm and spilled millions of gallons of oil onto the Spanish coast. France suffered a similar spill three years ago. “We decided enough was enough,” said French President Jacques Chirac. The new guidelines require more frequent and far more rigorous inspections of ships passing through coastal waters, and they forbid tankers from sailing too close to shore. France and Spain hope to get the rest of the E.U.—as well as future E.U. members, such as the Baltic states—to agree to the new guidelines next month.
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