HELCOM Executive Secretary meets with EU Environment Commissioner

Helsinki, 9 May (HELCOM) – The HELCOM Executive Secretary Anne Christine Brusendorff met on 4 May in Helsinki with the EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas to discuss present and future HELCOM actions to protect the Baltic Sea marine environment from all sources of pollution.

At the meeting, Dimas praised HELCOM’s work, and particularly welcomed recent efforts to create an innovative strategic action plan to restore the Baltic Sea marine environment. He reiterated EU’s full backing for the action plan, as well as emphasised that the plan will be instrumental to the implementation of the new EU marine strategy in the Baltic marine region. The Commissioner also stated that it is very important that HELCOM shares its vast and advanced experience in marine environment protection with other European regional sea commissions, especially the Black Sea Commission, two Member States of which will soon become new EU members.

On her part, Brusendorff briefed the EU Environment Commissioner on the latest progress in the development of the action plan, including the outcome of the kick-off Stakeholder Conference on the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan held in March 2006, which overwhelmingly supported the concept of the new environmental strategy, as well as this year's annual HELCOM Meeting, which approved the core elements of the plan – a common vision of a healthy sea, and a set of Ecological Objectives to work towards so as to fulfil this vision.

The Executive Secretary of the Helsinki Commission also informed the EU Environment Commissioner that the finalised Baltic Sea Action Plan will be adopted at a HELCOM Ministerial meeting to take place on 15 November 2007 in Warsaw, Poland. 

For information on the concept of the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan, please visit http://www.helcom.fi/BSAP/en_GB/intro/.

For more information, please contact:

Nikolay Vlasov
Information Secretary
Tel: +358 (0)207 412 635
Fax: +358 (0)207 412 639

E-mail: nikolay.vlasov@helcom.fi