Coastguard and Coastguard Centre
The Coastguard is a public organisation with its own tasks, powers and responsibilities together with enforcement and service tasks on the North Sea. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment is responsible for controlling the Coastguard’s service tasks (nautical management and response to incidents and calamities). The Permanent Contact Group Enforcement North Sea (PKHN), in which the relevant Ministries are represented, is responsible for managing all enforcement tasks (general enforcement, enforcement of environmental legislation, traffic safety and fishery). The Ministry of Defence is responsible for the Coastguard’s management and statutory duties.
The Coastguard contributes to:
- Proper use of the North Sea
- Safety at sea, in the area of both services and enforcement
- Supervising compliance with national and international legislation and obligations.
The Coastguard does this by implementing the following services and enforcement tasks:
Service tasks
- Emergency, Urgent and Security traffic
- Search and Rescue/SAR
- Disaster and Incident Response
- Medical assistance
- Nautical management (shipping lane markings, maritime traffic research)
- Nautical reporting
- Clearing explosives
Enforcement tasks
- General policing task
- Customs monitoring (import, export and transhipment of goods)
- Monitoring the environment
- Monitoring the fishing industry
- Monitoring shipping traffic
- Monitoring the way ships are fitted out
- Monitoring mining activities on the North Sea
- Border surveillance