EU green seas thematic strategy set for launch

Environment Daily 1967, 21/10/05

The European Commission will unveil a draft EU strategy to improve the marine environment on Monday.  It will aim to achieve "good environmental status" in all the bloc's seas by 2021.  A draft framework marine directive will give member states flexibility to decide their own environmental targets.  Several other proposals for action have been dropped.

The strategy is the second of seven promised by the EU's sixth environmental action programme of 2002.  Coordinated EU measures are needed, it states, because all existing efforts to protect the marine environment have not been sufficient.

At the initiative's heart is a framework directive.  This would require member states within four years to assess environment quality in each of their seas and define good environmental status.  They would have a further year to set environmental targets and indicators and two years to implement a monitoring and assessment programme.

By 2016, they would have to develop a programme of measures designed to achieve good environmental status by 2021.  The date is set to coincide with a first review of river basin management plans under the water framework directive, the central goal of which is achievement of "good status" of surface and groundwaters by 2015.

Member states would not have a legally binding obligation to achieve good environmental status, but the Commission would have right of scrutiny over their assessment, target-setting and monitoring, and the power to reject national programmes if it feels they would not meet the directive's aims.

Meanwhile many proposals made by ex-EU environment commissioner Margot Wallström three years ago have been ditched. These include plans to eliminate human-induced eutrophication and marine litter by 2010, and oil pollution from ships and offshore installations by 2020.  All references to the Ospar treaty and its aim of phasing out hazardous substance releases by 2010 have been removed.

The new strategy will form the environmental pillar of a wider maritime strategy still being developed by the Commission and on which a green paper is scheduled for early next year.  Among other issues this will tackle wider marine governance.

Follow-up: European Commission http://europa.eu.int/comm,

plus the strategy http://www.environmentdaily.com/docs/51021c.doc

and directive http://www.environmentdaily.com/docs/51021b.doc.