DIKE DG/2013/02rev2

Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD)
Common Implementation Strategy
Working Group on Data, Information and Knowledge Exchange (WG DIKE)
Agenda item:
Document: / DIKEDG/2013/02rev2
Title: / Reporting on monitoring programmes under MSFD Article 11
Prepared by: / ENV D2 and MRAG
Date prepared: / 12/07/2013
Background / Art. 11 provides legally-binding requirements for Member States to establish and implement coordinated monitoring programmes for the on-going assessment of the environmental status of EU waters. Member States are to notify the Commission of their monitoring programmes by 15 October 2014.
WG DIKE had an initial discussion in October 2012 on possible approaches to reporting on monitoring programmes and subsequent discussions including via a joint meeting on 22-23 January 2013 of representatives of WG GES and WG DIKE and the WG DIKE meeting in March 2013. A Recommendation on monitoring, defining 10 key questions to address in reportingwas agreed by MSCG on 7 May 2013.
ADrafting Group of WG DIKE discussed and further developed the reporting requirements for Article 11on 4 June 2013. Paper DIKE DG/2013/02rev was released to WG DIKE for comment on 19 June. The present version (rev2) reflects the comments received by 12 July (from DE, DK, ES and UK).
The following timetable is envisaged:
  • Reporting Sheet approvedas a basis for development of xml schemas and reporting tools (by WG DIKE (cc MSCG) via written procedure by 31 July);
  • Development of XML schemas and associated reporting tools (consultant,by mid September);
  • Paper on reporting sheet, draft schemas and reporting tools(Commission, by 23 September);
  • WG DIKE to consider paper at its meeting 7-8 October;
  • Testing of schemas and reporting tools(by volunteer Member States by 31 October);
  • Finalized paper on Reporting Sheet (Commission,by 5 November);
  • MSCG to adopt Reporting Sheet at its meeting 12-13 November;
  • Finalized schemas and reporting tools (consultant, by 31 December).

WG DIKE is invited to:

  1. Approve the final version[1]ofthe reporting sheet (Annex 1) and common set of monitoring programmes for reporting purposes (Annex2)as a basis for development of xml schemas and reporting tools. Note that converting the Reporting Sheet into a schema and reporting tools may entail some modification/clarification to the detail of the Reporting Sheet.

1

DIKE-DG/2013/02rev

Reporting on monitoring programmes under MSFD Article 11

1Background

WG DIKE initiated discussions on reporting of MSFD monitoring programmes, as required under Article 11, at its meeting in October 2012 (DIKE 6/2012/12). Proposals were further developed at the Ad-hoc Monitoring meeting in January 2013 (Ad-hocMonitoring 2013/3) and at WG DIKE in March 2013 (DIKE 7/2013/04), whilst at the same time an overall concept paper on MSFD monitoring was being developed (Ad-hocMonitoring 2013/2; GES 9/2013/3). The main part of the reporting paper and the 10 key questions for reporting, agreed by WG DIKE in March 2013, were combined with the monitoring concept paper and presented to MSCG as a Recommendation (MSCG 10/2013/05rev). MSCG adopted the Recommendation, after final amendments, on 7 May 2013[2].

Based on the agreed 10 key questions in the Recommendation, aproposed structure, content and formatfor reporting on MSFD monitoring programmes has been developed; this is intended to provide a 'minimum reporting requirement' for reporting under Article 11(3).This proposal was discussed at WG DIKE in March 2013 and further developed by a WG DIKE drafting group on 4June 2013; WG DIKE provided comments on a revised version (DIKE DG/2013/02rev), distributed on 19 June. Comments were received from DE, DK, ES and UK and accommodated into the present paper.

Technical handling of this proposed 'minimum reporting requirement', including potential use of decentralised national and/or regional web-based systems, has been discussed with a view to improving the efficiency of reporting through alignment with national and regional processes. This paper outlines current perspectives on these technical issues.

2Aim of reporting on monitoring programmes

Reporting to the Commission on MSFD monitoring programmes is a formal requirement of the directive (Art.11(3)). According to the Recommendation, a keyaim of this reporting is to provide sufficient information for the Commission to undertake its Article 12 assessmenteffectively. This will enable the Commission to verify that the monitoring programmes comply with the requirements of the Directive, particularly in relation to whether they will enable environmental status and progress with targets to be assessed, cover all relevant aspects (e.g. of MSFD Annex III), and are sufficiently coordinated, coherent and consistent with the monitoring programmes of neighbouring states in the same marine region/subregion.

The reporting therefore needs to include information about what will be monitored, where, with what spatial resolution and temporal frequency, and with what methodologies.The detail of what is to be reported is to be based on the 10agreed questions for reporting in Annex 3 of the Recommendation which in turn are directly linked to the requirements of the Directive (particularly Article 11 and Annex V). It is consequently helpful to both the Member States and the Commission to discuss and agree upon the contents and format of these reportsand the means of making this information available in order to help ensure they are well suited to the needs of the Article 12 assessment.

However, in developing this requirement for reporting to the Commission it is helpful also to consider the broader needs of Member States and others for information on the monitoring programmes:

  1. For national purposes to support development and implementation of monitoring programmes, including use at policy level and for technical delivery;
  2. For stakeholders and the public, to inform them of the programmes;
  3. For neighboring countries and regional organizations (e.g. Regional Sea Conventions) to foster cooperation within the (sub)region;
  4. For EU level to inform the Commission and others of the MemberState implementation.

Consideration of these broader needs could help develop better synergies between the reporting to theCommission and other needs, where there is some commonality in requirements. These aspects are further discussed in section 3, on decentralized reporting and joint documentation,in order to develop more effective and efficient reporting systems.

3Approach to reporting under Article 11

3.1Initialconsiderations

The overall approach to reporting is set out in the Recommendation.

WG DIKE reviewed the 2012 reporting process for MSFD Articles 8, 9 and 10 and drew conclusions on how the reporting process could be improved (MSCG 10/2013/07). This considered issues relating to the ability of the Member States to undertake the reporting, the reporting content, the timetable for developing the reporting requirements and the reporting tools and mechanisms. In relation to reporting on Article 11, the key conclusions were:

  1. Reporting requirements for future reporting rounds (Article 11, 13 and the next assessments in 2018) need to be developed much earlier to provide clarity to Member States in time to match their internal processes. This is particularly the case where Member States have long or complex internal and public consultation processes.
  2. Reporting tools need to be developed and tested in good time, including where possible improved more user-friendly interfaces and other aspects that improve the user friendliness for Member States and other users.
  3. There is a need to work more closely with the other Working Groups, particularly WG GES, to ensure greater coherence between conceptual/policy implementation and its application in reporting systems.
  4. The efficiency of reporting should be examined, with a view to simplifying reporting where possible, for example by referring to programmes already reported for other Directives,streamlining it with that of other Directives and Conventions, and considering decentralised systems where appropriate.

The development to date of reporting requirements for Article 11 has already started to address these conclusions. In particular:

  1. The development of reporting needs was initiated as early as possible (at the October 2012 meeting of WG DIKE, effectively as soon as reporting needs for Article 8, 9 and 10 had been finalized), and a target date for their completion agreed with Marine Directors in November 2012;
  2. Whilst development of the reporting tools for Art. 11 cannot start until there is clarity on the reporting content, the timelines for its development have been outlined, including testing phases, and the need for more user-friendly tools considered; additionally the use of the reported information has been clearly linked to the Article 12 assessment criteria (see Annex 3 of Recommendation);
  3. There has been close collaboration with WG GES through the Ad-hoc Monitoring meeting in January 2013 and subsequent development of the concept paper(later as a Recommendation);
  4. The possibility to decentralize some aspects of the reportingwas discussed by WG DIKE in March 2013, by the WG DIKE Drafting Group in June 2013and will be further developed;
  5. The possibility to develop documentation for reporting jointly across several countries (e.g. via a Regional Sea Convention), where joint monitoring programmes are in place to meet MSFD needs, was discussed by WG DIKE in March 2013 and is being actively considered by some Member States (e.g. via their Regional Sea Convention).

3.2Developing more efficient reporting

To help improve the efficiency of reporting for Article 11, two aspects willbe helpful to Member States:

  1. Early agreement of the main structure and content of the information needed by the Commission (which is centred around the 10 key questions in the Recommendation);
  2. Consideration of where information could be prepared once but used several times (e.g. for public consultation, higher level summaries for stakeholders, etc.).

Section 2 of this document reflects upon the range of possible 'users' of information on MSFD monitoring programmes. Whilst the information needs within each Member State will vary (for example to facilitate development of programmes, definition of the agreed programmes, public consultation processes and finally their implementation phase), it can be expected that some information (both in structure and content) may be similar for several purposes. Equally the information needed to support regional cooperation and for the reporting to the Commission is likely to follow broadly similar patterns, but with perhaps a key difference in the level of detail needed. This overall ‘information need’for different ‘users/purposes'is outlined in Figure1, to show that, for any one programme, there is likely to be a need for varying levels of detail and content of information. The level of detail needed by the Commission is generally much less than is required
for national and regional purposes.

Figure 1: Outline relationship for information needs (level of detail) for each monitoring programme between different 'users'. In some cases, the information required by the Commission and for public consultation could be the same.

Whilst the purpose of this paper is primarily to define the reporting requirements to the Commission, it is for Member States to consider if their other ‘information needs’ are suitable for alignment with this structure. This is particularly important for considering decentralised reporting.

3.3Minimizing reporting to the Commission through decentralized information management

Whilst there is a formal reporting requirement to the Commission, starting in 2014 and every six years thereafter, Member States could, if they chose to do so,keep this to a minimum if some of the more detailed information held by Member States is also available to the Commission, via for example, a national web site. This possibility was introduced at the WG DIKE meeting in March 2013, at which Germany presented its national monitoring web site where each programme was presented as a ‘fact sheet’ (DIKE 7/2013/09, 7/2013/14). Providing access to such information in this way would help reduce formal reporting burdens on Member States and ensure that more detailed information on each programme was always available to the Commission and other users.

In discussions at WG DIKE in March 2013 it was clear that decentralised reporting could offer a number of advantages:

  1. Reducing the amount of information transmitted to the Commission;
  2. Enabling the MemberState to prepare and hold its information in a manner suited to its national information systems;
  3. Providing a mechanism for the MemberState to keep its information up-to-date (i.e. between 6-year reporting cycles) to reflect the often changing aspects of monitoring programmes.

Several Member States agreed to develop the ideas and discuss the approach further at the DIKE Technical Sub-Group meeting on 4 July 2013. As there may be several technical solutions to delivering such decentralised reporting, and because not all Member States would be able to use this mechanism for the 2014 reporting (e.g. because of resources needed to build a suitable web site), it was clear that the Commission would need to also ensure a central reporting process[3]was available for the 2014 round. To facilitate both options the following are needed:

  1. An agreed ‘minimum reporting requirement'(see section 4) to the Commission,to be made available through Reporting Sheets[4](i.e. transmitted as XML files to ReportNet);
  2. An agreed set of MSFD monitoring programmesto ensure consistency in the organisation of the information and to facilitate its use by all relevant users (Commission, Regional Sea Conventions, neighbouring countries);
  3. An understanding of how more detailed information on each programme, if needed, would be made available to the Commission (such as via a decentralised web-site or ‘paper’ reports).

3.4Coordinated (joint) documentation

Member States are required under the Directive to coordinate their monitoring programmes to ensure they are coherent and consistent within each (sub-)region. Whilst the reporting of these programmes formally remains a MemberState responsibility, it is possible to prepare the required reporting information jointly (such as within the Regional Sea Convention framework). This would have the following advantages:

  1. clearly demonstrating to the Commission the level of coordination achieved (as the MS reports would hold the same information), and
  2. potentially reducing effort as only one documentation per programme or sub-programme need be prepared for the sub(region) for all relevant Member States.

Joint documentation could be combined with decentralised reporting, e.g. where information on those programmes or sub-programmes which are developed jointed within a region is held on the web site of a Regional Sea Convention. Further discussion is required on the practicalities of delivering such joint documentation, including how Member States could use it, in combination with their national reports, to fulfil their formal reporting obligations under the directive.

4Proposed structure, content and formatfora ‘minimum reporting requirement'to the Commission

Based upon the considerations in Section 3 on how Member States could move to a more decentralised system for maintaining their information on monitoring programmes, but still meet their formal requirements to report to the Commission, as required under Article 11(3), a structure for reporting and a 'minimum reporting requirement' needs to be defined (as a Reporting Sheet). As set out in the Recommendation, this is to becentred on the 10 key questions for reporting and is divided into three sections:

  1. General questions
  2. Programme-level questions
  3. Sub-programme-level questions

Annex 1 aims to set out a 'minimum reporting requirement' against these 10 questions, with a focus on provision of categorized information (Summary Information) that can be readily analysed at EU level, but is supported where necessary by brief additional explanatory text.Technical handling of making available this proposed 'minimum reporting requirement' requires further discussion. Should the Commission require further information to understand what has been reported, it could obtain this from the decentralised information held on national and/or regional web sites or in more detailed 'paper' reports, should some Member Stateschoose also to submit these to the Commission. See Section 5 for further explanation.

4.1Building upon existing reporting structures

The proposed questions under Article 11 make links to reporting on Articles 8, 9, 10 and (in future) 13 as the monitoring programmes are closely associated to these articles; the reporting can consequently make use of information reported by Member States in 2012 under Articles 8, 9 and 10, such as established structures and term lists. This will have the advantage of enabling links to be made in the reporting database between Article 11 and these previous articles, and also in reuse of structures with which Member States are already familiar.

It is therefore proposed that reuse is made of:

  1. Relevant xml schemas (e.g. geographic boundaries);
  2. Relevant term lists (e.g. lists of pressures, functional groups, habitat types), updating these where needed;
  3. Relevant aspects defined by Member States (e.g.specific indicators, environmental targets)[5].

Data and information from the monitoring programmes have to be made available according to MSFD Article19(3). Whilst there is a separate process of WG DIKE, via its Technical Sub-Group, for forward implementation of Article 19(3) (e.g. to define which data/data sets are most suitable to aggregate at (sub)regional) scales, how they will be accessed), it is appropriate to make initial links to Article 19(3) through some generic questions, whilst leaving the detail on specific datasets (e.g. metadata) to this associated process.

4.2What is a programme and sub-programme?

A key issue for structuring the reporting sheet is to define what constitutes a 'programme' and a 'sub-programme' as this influencessignificantly the consistency of reporting across Member Statesand the level of detail and variation reported under each section of the Reporting Sheet.

In order to ensure consistency between Member States in how the reporting on monitoring programmes is structured and to facilitate their assessment under Article 12, an agreed common set of programmes should be used.WG DIKE discussed a proposal that there should be a 'programme' to address each of the Descriptors, i.e. one for eutrophication, one for contaminants, litter etc.For the biodiversity descriptors (D1, 3, 4, 6) it was recognised that it may be more appropriate to structure reporting in another way, e.g. around seabed and water column habitats, and around birds, mammals, fish, reptiles and pelagic cephalopods, to reflect the inter-relationships of these descriptors. The WG DIKE Drafting Group wished to separate monitoring for Descriptor 3 (commercial fish and shellfish) from the other biodiversity monitoring (D1, 4 and 6) because the necessary data will mostly be collected through the CFP DC-MAP (Data Collection Multi-Annual Programme);however data from this D3 programme would also contribute to assessments for Descriptors 1, 4 and 6.Annex 2 provides the proposed set of monitoring programmes to be used by all Member States for reporting.

Using this agreed structure at Programme level, it is proposed to have flexibility at sub-programme level to reflect the likely range of requirements within each Descriptor and across the (sub-)regions. Each programme willconsequently contain a number of sub-programmes, the number varying depending upon the complexity of the Descriptor, the extent that GES has already been achieved, the (extent of) Member Statemarine waters, the (variety of) associated activities, pressures and measures and the environmental targets which have been set.