MUCH like Erwin Schrödinger’s cat, shipping’s climate change thought experiment — the Net-Zero Framework — may be considered to be simultaneously both alive and dead while it is unobserved.

Until International Maritime Organization member states reopen that box in October 2026, shipping exists in the realm of quantum superposition and is dividing itself between the dead and alive camps.

For Europe, that existential division is broadly one of geography.

The northern range EU states remain surprisingly committed to retaining the original text that was so nearly killed outright amid a geopolitical showdown over carbon pricing in October.

The current “plan” from within these EU member states is to do nothing. They intend to wait until the box is opened having not changed “a single comma” of the divisive text, and simply see if it comes out alive, or dead.

In the south of Europe, there now exists an equally fatalistic plan. An increasingly emboldened coalition, which has now recruited Italy into the existing EU Awkward Squad of Greece, Malta and Cyprus, is assuming it is dead already and planning alliances accordingly.

They won’t even hear proposals on how to revive a carbon-pricing mechanism and have hardened their previously tentative alignment with the Trump administration’s “bullish” opposition.

While the rest of the IMO last week was drawing straws on who should tell Russia that it was still not allowed back in from the cold at the council elections, Greece, Cyprus, Malta and Italy were busy drawing up the rules of their own EU club.

According to the new agreement, the four governments will now speak with a united voice within the European Union and the IMO “on issues that impact this vital industry for our nations”.

“Standing together, the Mediterranean can ensure that our people continue to benefit from the global maritime industry, even in challenging times for our region,” explained Malta’s transport minister following its IMO confab.

A Mediterranean splinter cell within the EU further complicates the calculations on what happens next in terms of carbon regulation, but it also points to an increasingly fragmented debate within the IMO.

Realistically what happens between here and the opening of the NZF box is going to further divide political groupings within the IMO down geopolitical lines.

Whether the NZF emerges dead or alive is almost irrelevant at this stage because the political divisions are looking sufficiently entrenched to ensure that progress is going to stall regardless.

Richard Meade
Editor-in-chief, Lloyd’s List

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