EU 2020 goals to protect Europe's waters destined to fail without a "political step-change"

The European Committee of the Regions' (CoR) has warned that delivering the 2020 objectives to protect Europe's waters was running off course and needed a significant "political step-change" to succeed. Led by Hermann Kuhn (DE/PES)from Bremen City Parliament, the assembly's opinion adopted today argues that current Member States' national targets were "lacking in ambition, vague and inconsistent" which could lead to the 2020 EU marine goals being undermined having detrimental consequences for Europe's marine life.

The CoR's opinion raises concern about the delivery of the EU's Marine Strategy Framework Directive which was passed in 2008 to protect Europe's marine environment. The main objective of the binding EU legislation is to achieve "Good Environmental Status" of Europe's seas by 2020 and Mr. Kuhn stated that the Directive was part of the answer to reducing the unsustainable pressure placed on marine life due to fishing, transport, energy, and agriculture.

With Member States expected to draw up national action plans how to deliver the 2020 objective later this year, the CoR argues that the current targets set by the Member States are "lacking ambition, vague and inconsistent, making it very difficult to know how much still needs to be done to meet the target" and so there was a growing urgency for a "political step-change".

The rapporteur is “fully convinced that joint regional planning of measures for sea basins will be the key to ensuring shared success  and that protecting EU waters requires a strategy that engaged all EU institutions, member states, local and regional authorities, civil society and businesses. Delivering the targets would, the CoR argues, need further reform and set out several proposals to achieve this end:

bring in new rules to restrict and even ban plastic bag;

introduce an EU-wide ban on the use of micro-plastics in cosmetics and cleaning products;

investigate the impact of energy (noise, light, heat and radiation) on seas;

set up an EU noise register and develop legal standards/limits to reduce the impact of noise on the marine environment;

require private companies to collect data and share data on marine environmental status;

restrict fishing and marine mineral mining in marine conservation areas (including no-take areas) to ensure that the level of protection of such areas is improved;

a set of new marine conservation areas to be designated where needed to achieve good environmental status.