Marine Strategy - Second Stakeholder Conference Rotterdam

Marine Strategy - Second Stakeholder Conference Rotterdam

10-12 November 2004

Bullet Points for the Speech of

Catherine Day

Director General,

DG Environment

European Commission

1. Why do we need to Protect the Marine Environment in Europe

• 50% of EU territory is covered by sea
• many people live off or close to the sea/coast (today, about 70 out of the 455 million citizens of the enlarged European Union, i.e. 16% of the EU population, live in coastal municipalities. This proportion keeps increasing).
• marine environment plays a dominant role in our eco-system and in determining our climate through ocean circulation andheat exchange
• also hosts a great diversity of life forms, important for biodiversity and sustainable development –in this context could reiterate the EU commitment to reverse bio-diversity decline by 2010.
• under considerable stress (fishing, shipping, oil and gas exploration, sand and gravel extraction, coastal development, pollution carried by rivers and in the atmosphere) despite efforts of recent decades. New pressures such as climate change can have profound effects in the future –already it is reported that species distribution patterns are changing in the North Sea..
• global responsibility-the importance as well as the vulnerability of the marine environment has been recognised internationally at the WSSD in Joburg and especially the need of sustainable fishing practises.

2. Why do we need a Specific Strategy to Protect the Marine Environment at the EU Level.?

• The marine environment is under stress in the EU region- over fishing, shipping accidents, nutrient enrichment in the Baltic and Black Sea etc;
• Many of the pressures are transboundary in nature and very few of these pressures can be tackled by individual Member States acting alone;
• A significant number of EU policy areas –CAP, CFP, Transport, Water Protection, Chemicals’ control, impact upon the marine environment but there is no concerted and integrated policy for marine protection at the EU level.
• The need and rationale for an EU approach identified in 6th EAP and in the Commission’s communication “towards an EU strategy to protect the marine environment”

3. Environmental and Institutional Diversity

One of themain challenges for the future will beto design a strategy which delivers significant added value compared to existing efforts while recognising the inherent differences between the situation in the different regional seas around Europe both environmentally and institutionally.

• Regionally the strategy will cover Artic, North East Atlantic, Baltic, Mediterranean and Black seas.
• Will the 25 existing EU Member States but will also be designed to link with non EU countries with whom we share seas.
• Will be important to follow an integrated approach, not the sector by sector approach we have now.
• Also important to build on existing legal and regional institutions – delighted that ICES and all regional marine conventions e.g. OSPAR, HELCOM, Barcelona Convention, Black Sea Commission, Artic Council are all working closely with us and are present today.

Beyond Europe’s regional seas, the EU must seek to promote a sustainable pattern of development/management for the planet’s seas and oceans. This will involve reducing the EU’s environmental footprint on the marine environment through the appropriate design of the external elements of the CFP and through the EU’s external and development policies.

4. Status Timing of the EU Strategy

• Grateful to stakeholders for huge amount of preparatory work – tremendous expertise has been made available to us in working groups addressing the ecosystem approach, dangerous substances and monitoring and assessment;
• Intention is to propose Thematic Strategy on the Protection of the Marine Environment in 2005 – will be an important early action of the new Commission;
• President-designate Barroso has also signalled his interest in marine and maritime issues by indicating that the new Commission will develop a concerted maritime policyand by designating one Commissioner, Mr Borg, to co-ordinate all the maritime activities of the new Commission. The Thematic Strategy on the protection of the Marine Environment which we will be discussing over the next three days, will be a major component of that wider Maritime Strategy (likely to be proposed during 2006). My colleague, Mr Holmquist will give you more information about the wider policy context in a few moments.

5. What will the Thematic Strategy on the Marine Environment look like?

Although no final decisions have been taken yet (and can only be taken once the new Commission is in office) we feel (on the basis of the extensive stakeholder consultation carried out over the past 2 years) we feel it should consist of:

• A common vision. We need to agree on what we are trying to achieve through the strategy. The vision should be clear, easy to communicate to the public, precise enough to be measurable so that we can judge over time whether we are coming closer to our objective but flexible enough to take regional specificities into account. It could be formulated in terms of an overall goal – “to ensure that we and future generations can enjoy biologically diverse and dynamic oceans and seas that are safe, clean, healthy and productive”. This common vision needs to be accompanied by a long term political commitment to achieving it, since ecosystems react slowly.The common vision should be implemented through a number of agreed objectives such as 1)to protect (and where practicable to restore) marine ecosystems so as to achieve and maintain good ecological status; 2) to phase out some types of pollution in the marine environment within a defined time frame; 3) to develop marine goods and services in a sustainable manner;
• A commitment to pursue an integrated approach(the eco-system approach) to the management of the marine environment.

• A set of general principles for implementing the strategy, such as the use of the precautionary principle, the ongoing involvement of stakeholders etc.

6. From Vision to Reality.

• Assuming we can agree on the common vision, objectives and approach we will then need to agree on how to implement it at regional level.
• The eco-system approach requires the identification of eco-regions as the basic unit for implementation. ICES is helping us to develop a proposal on this aspect.
• Once identified and agreed, each eco-region will need to develop a regional implementation plan which should include operational objectives, limits and indicators.Clearly developing these regional plans will be a challenge because it will involve EU and non EU countries which have different ways of working.

7. The Form and Character of the Strategy.

• Recognise importance/sensitivity but this is not the key consideration- first decide what we want to achieve, then we can finalise the means;
• May need a legal framework, agreed by the Council and European Parliament, to establish the goals that we will pursue in regional and global fora, to set common objectives, monitoring and assessment methods, management plans, integration of different policy areas etc.
• Our experience is that a legally binding framework provides the assurance that all stakeholders will deliver on the agreed objectives.
• Given the complexity of issues in the marine environment our feeling in the Commission at this stage is that we need some sort of framework directive, , which sets out common goals but leaves a wide margin of flexibility to take account of different regional situations. For the EU, having such a legally binding framework is probably the best way of securing the long term political commitment which we need to deliver on our ambitious goal.

8. Working with those Outside the EU.

Of course a decision within the EU cannot bind countries outside the Union. We hope to work with third countries both bi-laterally and through existing regional organisations in order to develop a comprehensive and inclusive approach towards protection of Europe’s regional seas.

In the case of existing regional organisations and conventions such as OSPAR, HELCOM, Barcelona and the Bucharest convention, we consider that these bodies have a political and legal mandate combined with extensive knowledge of the specific situation in each of the regional seas which means they are uniquely qualified to promote the protection of the marine environment. We trust that they will choose to work together with the EU and will serve as a bridge between the EU and non-EU countries

9. Rallying Call for the Conference.

This Stakeholder conference brings an intensive process of consultation to an end. The process has shown that we can do more by better integrating environmental concerns into sector policies but that this is not enough – we will not achieve the kind of common objectives we will be discussing here in Rotterdam unless we have an integrated approach which ensures coherence at every stage of policy development and implementation. Thank you for your co-operation with us – we will want to continue to work just as closely with you once the Thematic Strategy has been formally proposed. That’s when the real work will start!

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