Article 8 — Tasks relating to maritime surveillance and maritime crises

1. The Agency shall provide the Commission and the Member States, upon the request of the Commission or a Member State, with state-of-the-art maritime surveillance and communication services, including space-based and ground infrastructure and sensors mounted on any kind of platform, that improve maritime situational awareness, including with regard to geopolitical challenges. 2. In the field of traffic monitoring covered by Directive 2002/59/EC, the Agency shall in particular promote cooperation between riparian States in the shipping areas concerned, and develop, maintain and operate the long-range identification and tracking of ships (LRIT) European Data Centre as defined in Article 6b and SafeSeaNet as referred to in Article 22a, of that Directive as well as the LRIT International Data Exchange system in accordance with the commitment made within the IMO. 3. The Agency shall provide, upon request and without prejudice to Union law and national law, relevant vessel positioning and Earth observation data to the Commission, to the competent national authorities and relevant Union bodies, within their mandate, in order to facilitate measures against threats of piracy and of intentional unlawful acts as provided for in applicable Union law or under internationally agreed legal instruments in the area of maritime transport, subject to applicable data protection rules and in accordance with administrative procedures as established by Directive 2002/59/EC. The provision of LRIT information shall be subject to the consent of the flag State concerned. 4. The Agency shall operate a centre available 24 hours a day and seven days a week providing, upon request and without prejudice to Union law and national law, to the Commission, to the competent national authorities without prejudice to their rights and responsibilities as flag, coastal and port States, and to relevant Union bodies, within their mandate, maritime situational awareness and analytical data, as appropriate, supporting them in: (a) safety, security and pollution at sea; (b) situations of emergency at sea; (c) the implementation of Union legal acts requiring the monitoring of ship movements and hazards to navigation; (d) measures against threats of piracy and of other intentional unlawful acts as provided for in applicable Union law or under internationally agreed legal instruments in the area of maritime transport; (e) the implementation of the Union restrictive measures adopted under Article 29 of the Treaty on European Union or Article 215 TFEU that fall under the remit of the competences of the Agency. The provision of such information shall be subject to applicable data protection rules and in accordance with guidelines to be issued by the high-level steering group established in accordance with Directive 2002/59/EC, as appropriate. The provision of LRIT information shall be subject to the consent of the flag State concerned. 5. The Agency shall, within its field of competence, contribute to the timely response to, and mitigation of, crises by assisting, upon request, the Member States and the Commission with the execution of contingency plans and by facilitating the exchange of information and best practices between them. 6. The Agency shall assist the Commission in the operation of the maritime surveillance component of the Copernicus Security Service within the governance and financial framework of the Copernicus programme. 7. The Agency shall assist the Commission and the Member States in the development and maintenance of the voluntary Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE), an interoperability solution, with the aim of facilitating information exchange between different systems used by national civil and military authorities with responsibility in the maritime domain complementing the information already available through the mandatory information systems.