Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2026-10-19 Origin: Site
Almost every enquiry we receive about a passenger ferry or a workboat includes the same question: "Is it CE certified?" It is a reasonable question — and the honest answer is that the CE marking regime was never designed to cover this kind of vessel at all. Understanding why matters, because it tells you which documents you should actually be asking for.
Directive 2013/53/EU — the Recreational Craft Directive, or RCD — applies to boats with a hull length between 2.5 m and 24 m that are intended for sport or leisure use. It has applied since 18 January 2016 and replaced the earlier Directive 94/25/EC.
The Directive is explicit about what it leaves out: racing boats and commercial boats are outside its scope, along with non-motorised canoes and kayaks, and special craft such as submersibles, air cushion vehicles and hydrofoils.
A passenger ferry carrying fare-paying passengers, a harbour workboat, a fire barge or a patrol boat is a commercial vessel. It therefore sits outside the RCD — no matter how carefully it is built, and no matter how much it may look like a large leisure boat.
For a leisure craft inside the scope, the RCD is a substantial piece of regulation. It sets requirements for structure, stability, buoyancy and flotation; for flooding and discharge prevention; for steering, visibility, handling and anchoring; and for the installation of engine, gas, electrical and fuel systems. It also imposes exhaust and noise emission limits.
On the administrative side, a compliant boat carries a builder's plate and comes with a technical file, an owner's manual and a Declaration of Conformity. The hull identification number (HIN) is regulated separately under Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/1, applicable from 24 January 2017. The European Commission publishes an application guide to the Directive — the current edition is the third, dated March 2026 — which is the reference to read before arguing about interpretation.
None of this is optional for a leisure boat sold in the EU. It is simply not the regime that governs a commercial passenger vessel.
Commercial craft are regulated through a different route, and in practice it is a combination of three things:
Classification society rules. The vessel is designed, built and surveyed against a class society's rules — for example CCS, ABS, DNV, Lloyd's Register or Bureau Veritas — which cover hull structure, machinery, electrical systems, fire protection and stability.
Flag state approval. The maritime administration of the country where the vessel will be registered reviews the design and surveys the vessel, and sets the manning, route and passenger limits.
The project specification. A commercial newbuild is built to a specification agreed with its owner: passenger capacity, route and sea state, operating profile, equipment fit and redundancy.
That is a fundamentally different risk model. A leisure craft is assessed as a product; a passenger vessel is assessed as a ship, carrying a known number of people on a defined route, with intact and damage stability cases, fire separation and a survey regime that continues through its working life.
The practical consequence is simple: the documents you ask for should match the category of vessel.
Buying a leisure boat? Ask for the builder's plate, the Declaration of Conformity, the owner's manual, the technical file reference and the HIN. Our recreational range is built to that framework.
Buying a passenger ferry or workboat? Ask for the class society's approval of drawings, the build survey records, the stability booklet, and the flag state's certification or its letter of intent to certify.
A "CE certificate" presented as the compliance basis for a passenger ferry is a warning sign, not a reassurance — it usually means the supplier has not understood which regime applies. The same applies to a leisure boat offered with nothing but a class certificate and no Declaration of Conformity.
We build both kinds of vessel, and we keep the two regimes separate. Our recreational models — the fibreglass coastal motor boats and the aluminium leisure craft — are built to the RCD framework for their design category, including the 32ft fibreglass coastal motor boat.
Our commercial craft — steel passenger vessels, fire barges, patrol and work boats — are built to class society rules and the project specification agreed with the owner, with the flag state's requirements built into the design from the outset. The steel boat range is where most of that work happens.
If you are unsure which regime applies to the vessel you are planning, send us the intended use, route, passenger number and flag state. That is enough for us to tell you, before any drawings are made, which approvals your project will actually need. Contact our team here.
