Green Paper for a EU Maritime Policy

The Green Paper Towards the future Maritime Policy for the Union: a European vision for the oceans and seas aims to launch a debate about the scope and main orientations of a future EU Maritime Policy.

The Green Paper proposes a policy that treats the oceans and seas in a holistic way in order to achieve a sustainable development of these areas; this is, to ensure mutual reinforcement of economic growth, social welfare and environmental protection. Instead a mere collection of vertical sectoral policies, this policy should be integrated, intersectoral and multidisciplinary. In this regard, existing sectoral policies on maritime transport, industry, offshore energy, fisheries, the marine environment, coastal regions and others are to be examined in a systematic manner in order to explore how they could be combined to reinforce each other by avoiding fragmentation of decision-making.

Underlying Principles

The Commission believes that in pursuing the vision of "an all-embracing maritime policy aimed at developing a thriving maritime economy, in an environmental sustainable manner" it should rest firmly on twin pillars:

• The Lisbon Strategy

• An Ecosystem-based Management

Relation to coastal areas

Coastal areas are becoming more and more attractive for Europe’s affluent population, leading to the establishment of a new industry around maritime leisure services. This has created the need to support sustainable tourism to ensure that Europe remains the Nº1 world tourist destination. However there are not enough statistics to estimate the value of coastal locations, the state of health of the sea off the coasts, the availability of maritime leisure opportunities or the positive effects of the sea on their quality of life (i.e. no indicators on the non-market value of the sea exist). Without statistics, it is hard to see how planning authorities can give sufficient weight to these elements when taking decisions with regarding the development of economic activities in coastal areas or coastal waters.

Need for a preventative approach and innovative planning

As coastal areas become more attractive to Europeans, increased attention will need to be paid to the increasing coastal risks, such as erosion and flooding, generally attributed to global climate change, and how they may be avoided by the development of new planning techniques. The exportation of these new planning techniques to those parts of the world experiencing similar impacts would allow Europe to retain its leadership in sustainable maritime development.

Financial tools for coastal regions

It will be necessary to reflect on how emerging EU Maritime Policy goals can be supported through EU financial instruments. Coastal regions receive financial support from several EU policies, which may be of considerable interest for the development of maritime policy. In this context there is a need to discuss how burdens carried by certain coastal regions or Member States in the common interest should be reflected in the allocation of financing among regions.

In this regard, the main source is the Cohesion policy (namely the Structural Funds –ERDF, ESD- and the Cohesion Fund, which aim to reduce disparities between different regions.

Relation to Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM)

One of the principles of ICZM is to integrate the sea, the land and their interface areas under a single integrating management, rather than limiting such management to terrestrial areas. Given the interaction of coastal and maritime issues across the land-sea interface, an overall EU maritime policy has a major stake in the success of ICZM. Consideration should therefore be given to an EU-wide mechanism for comparative analysis and an exchange of best practice.

One important link between land and the marine ecosystems is provided by the continuous flow of water from our rivers to the sea. As ecosystem-based management of coastal waters develops on the basis of the Thematic Strategy for the Marine Environment (EU Marine Strategy), it is likely that land-based measures to be taken will be identified if its objectives are to be achieved.

A future maritime policy has to build instruments and methods for ensuring consistency between land and marine systems in order to avoid duplication and regulations, or the transfer of unsolved land-planning problems to the sea. One idea would be to associate the same stakeholders in the planning processes of each. A common vision in the form of an overall coastal and marine spatial development plan could provide a coherent set of policy objectives and principles.

Relation with other EU policies

The Green Paper builds upon existing EU policies and initiatives and dovetails with the Lisbon Strategy.

The Commission believes that a system of spatial planning built on the Ecosystem-based Approach for maritime activities on the waters, under the jurisdiction of, or controlled by the Member States should be created. Previous experiences in other regions of the world show that such planning systems need to be designed with the participation of all relevant stakeholders. This process is made both politically easier and economically more efficient by the provision of appropriate management tools, such as systems for the provision of extensive spatial data (The European Marine Observation and Data Network), cumulative Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)

A major issue highlighted by the Green Paper is the reconciliation of the development of maritime transport and environmental conservation, against the background of the constraints imposed by EU regulations under Natura 2000 and the Birds Directive and the Habitat Directive.

INSPIRE Directive

The need for marine data at the service of multiple activities shows that there are still major problems regarding harmonization and reliability, as well as insufficiently and geographically imbalanced monitoring in EU marine regions. In this regard, one of the recommendations proposed by the Green Paper is that the EU should consider setting up a European Marine Observation and Data Network which would provide a sustainable focus for improving systematic observation (in situ and from space), interoperability and increasing access to data, based on robust, open and generic ICT solutions.

A major component of the Data Network should be the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) initiative, which will implement a number of public information services in support of European policies, derived from in situ space observations. GMES will also contribute to the aims of the INSPIRE initiative (now the INSPIRE Directive!), which provides the geographic information necessary for environmental policy making.

Related Capacity Building issues in the Green Paper