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The birth of a European Maritime Policy

The EU is normally referred to as the world’s largest maritime power. The following data allows demonstrating that leadership:

• Europe, surrounded by 4 Seas and 2 Oceans, has the world’s largest maritime territory.
• EU maritime territories are representative of approximately 50% of the European GNP.
• The EU has 40% of the world fleet of maritime transport, its ports generate 20,000 M€ in Added Value, and maritime tourism in the EU, in 2004, achieved a direct business turnover of 72,000 M€.
• Maritime sector industries and services generate between 3% and 5% of the GNP of the EU.
• Approximately 90% of external trade and 40% of internal trade is sea borne.

However, until now, as stated in the EC Green Book, “our policies regarding maritime transport, maritime industry, coastal areas, offshore energy, fisheries and the marine environment were separately developed”.

This fragmentation induces two problems. On the one hand, “it can lead to the adoption of contradictory measures with negative consequences for the marine environment”. On the other hand, “the fragmentation of the decision process does not allow the understanding of the potential impact of a number of activities in another and prevents us from taking advantage of unexplored synergies between different maritime sectors”.

But the challenges are not limited to the need to overcome the fragmentation of European policies affecting the marine environment. We are today facing phenomena, such as hydrocarbon pollution, climatic change and the over-exploiting of resources, which cause increased risks to the Sea and to the coastal zones. And it so happens that such risks have global repercussions.

In this context, the EC launched, through its Green Paper “For a Future Maritime Policy of the Union: a European View of the Oceans and the Seas”, the challenge to create a new view for the management of our relationship with the oceans, interpreted in an integrated European Maritime Policy, capable of freeing the unexploited potential in terms of growth, employment and protection of the marine environment.

Now that the public debate surrounding these issues has ended, the EC will present on October 10 the proposal for the European Maritime Policy and for an Action Plan which allows this new policy to be materialized.

Two facts deserve being highlighted in respect to the European policy on Research, Development and Innovation. In the first place, the 7th Framework Programme identified the Sea Sciences and Technologies with a transversal priority. Secondly, the presentation of the European R&D Maritime Strategy is expected at the end of 2008.

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