| Abstract : | Thousands of potentially harmful marine species are transported all over the world into the ballast water and this is proved by the fact that there are hundreds of examples of severe ecological, economical and human health impacts from invasive aquatic species around the world. The transfer of aquatic invasive species into new environments via ballast water has been specified as one of the greatest threats to the oceans. The risk of spread of these invasive species is being increased as a result of the global nature and continuous growth of maritime trade. In an effort to minimize and ultimately extinguish this risk, IMO proceeded to the implementation of a regulatory framework of international character by adopting the International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments (BWMC). The aforementioned Convention entered into force on September the 8th of 2017.In turn BWMC affected the decision-making in the maritime industry since it introduced, inter alia, new requirements for port States and ships around the world. The United States have already set in force their own regulations regarding ballast water treatment in an effort to regulate the harmful aquatic organisms’ transfer to their territorial waters. Since there is no globally unified way of facing this challenge and legal approaches vary around the world, the problem becomes more complex. Therefore, a need arises for the regulations and standards applying on new and existing ships to be presented in a clear and consolidated way. This is the reason why this thesis focuses on the different international and regional regulatory frameworks. Ballast Water management is currently entering a new phase where all ships will soon be compelled to meet new and stricter standards for ballast water discharging. Apart from the clarification of the applicable legislation, even stricter ballast water discharge laws and regulations create uncertainty to the ship-owners and alters significantly the costs not only for new but for existing ships as well. This thesis tries to bring attention to the legal approaches and economic challenges and ideally present an overview to maritime professionals to enable them to take the best possible decision in relation to the trading limits of their ships and in relation to the legal regimes they must be compliant with.
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