Statement of the Polish Minister and closure speech as a host of the meeting

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, Ministers,

I would like to thank you for your hard work and your strong will to achieve good consensus and agreement towards HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan. I am happy that after such a long discussion we were able to reach the common agreement on the document.

Right now, it should be stressed, that this is just the beginning of the long way to improve the environmental status of the Baltic Sea. The most difficult part, the implementation period of the Action Plan is still ahead of us.

It is also very important to ensure good cooperation and coordination in order to jointly implement the agreed actions as well as programmes and later, to review their implementation.

The vision of a clean Baltic Sea became a reality only on the condition that this ambitious strategy is fully implemented and does not exist only on a paper but also in practice.

The eutrophication of the Baltic Sea caused by excessive input of nutrients, can be minimized only by reducing the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus input from the Baltic States to the sea. The actions must be taken in the municipal sector, industry as well as agriculture sectors.

Pollution caused by Hazardous substances refers to a massive number of different anthropogenic substances ending up in the marine environment including substances that do not occur naturally in the environment and substances occurring at concentrations exceeding natural levels. They have significant impact on the marine environment and can accumulate in living organisms. Therefore, there is a strong need to identify the sources and take actions to minimize the input of hazardous substances to the marine environment of the Baltic Sea.

Biodiversity element of the Baltic Sea Action Plan will act as a controlling element for the performance of the whole Action Plan.  To protect the unique biodiversity of the Baltic Sea, a good spatial management priorities are needed, better protection of endangered and threatened plant and animals by establishing, ecologically coherent network of marine protected areas.  Due to the significant impact of fishery on biodiversity, implementation of marine environmental protective measures in fishery is also very important, and shall be done in cooperation with relevant authorities and institutions.

Environmentally friendly Maritime activities at sea are needed to ensure a safety maritime transport without a pollution of the Baltic Sea coming from ships, hazard of oil spills or introduction of alien species.

I strongly believe that due to our enormous effort to prepare and later to implement the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan, our children will again swim in a very transparent and clean water, free from eutrophication and without high concentration of hazardous substances, with high natural biodiversity and environment friendly maritime activities at sea.

Furthermore, I strongly believe that we will not loose this momentum and agreement we were able to reach here. I believe will be able to report during the next Ministerial Meeting on 2013 on the successful implementation of the programmes of measures thorough the Baltic Sea catchment area in order to reach good environmental status.

I wish you nice and safe back home, and I hope that you will have the chance and desire to visit Poland again.