Peter Jones – in Open Channels: ‘The European Environment Agency provides independent scientific assessments and advice to the European Commission and European Parliament.  It’s recent European Environment — State and Outlook 2015 (SOER 2015) report highlights some worrying issues and trends, particularly for the marine environment (see briefing), e.g.

• “Across all of Europe’s regional seas, marine biodiversity is in poor condition: only 7% of marine species assessments and 9% of marine habitat assessments indicate ‘favourable conservation status’
• The marine Natura 2000 network of MPAs protected under EU law covers just 4% of EU seas, whilst MPAs protected under national law cover another 1.9% of EU seas, the total of 5.9% MPA coverage falling far short of the Convention on Biological Diversity target for 10% MPA coverage by 2020. In less than 6 years, European countries need to designate the same area of MPAs as has been designated under the marine Natura 2000 network over the last 20 years if this target is to be met;
• The low proportion of MPA features in favourable conservation status (see 1st point above) indicates that the existing network of MPAs is critically lacking in effectiveness, as well as in coverage;
• Whilst the number of assessed fish stocks in EU Atlantic and Baltic waters fished above their maximum sustainable yield (MSY) fell from 94% in 2007 to 39% in 2013, there was a slight increase in the proportion of overexploited stocks in these seas to 41% in 2014, and 91% of the assessed stocks in Mediterranean Sea and 5 out of 7 of the assessed stocks in the Black Sea are being fished over MSY”

In the face of these worrying trends, and with the deadline for restoring Europe’s seas to Good Environmental Status by 2020 under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD 2008) looming, it would be reasonable to assume that the European Commission’s maritime policies would be steered towards marine conservation priorities as a matter of urgency. Unfortunately, this is far from the case, in fact the policies seem to be veering off course towards blue growth, as indicated by a number of recent developments:-

https://www.openchannels.org/blog/pjsjones/european-marine-spatial-planning-policies-towards-good-environmental-status-our-seas