NGOs unconvinced by EU marine strategy

Environment Daily 1968, 24/10/05

EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas formally launched the EU's new marine environment strategy on Monday, promising measures to ensure that all European marine waters are environmentally healthy by 2021.

European environmental groups banded together to call the proposals "desparately inadequate".

A draft directive accompanying the strategy "falls short", the NGOs claim, by failing to set legally binding objectives, "including a clear definition of what constitutes a healthy sea".  They called on EU governments and MEPs to make good the deficit.

All relevant documents have now been posted by the European Commission, including the now obligatory impact assessment.

Follow-up: See European Commission press release http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/05/1335

and memo http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/05/393,

plus the strategy http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/water/marine/com_504_en.pdf

(COM(2005)504), the directive http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/water/marine/dir_505_en.pdf

(COM(2005)505) and accompanying impact assessment http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/water/marine/impact_en.pdf

(SEC(2005)1290).  See also NGOs' response http://www.eeb.org/press/20051024-joint-PR-marine-strategy.pdf.