The Marine Strategy Coordination Group (MSCG) met in Brussels on April 7th to further the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD).
Of significance were the efforts made to undermine any linkages with the Regional Seas Conventions (RSC), HELCOM in the Baltic and for example OSPAR, by several Member States, most notably France.
These Conventions are however important institutions. They have made much headway and progress concerning analysis and marine management, and we fully support their integration with the MSFD. From the Baltic region, Germany provided leadership and made several valuable contributions and interventions. However, other Baltic Sea countries remained passive on this crucial point.
Uncoupling the RSCs from the MSFD would water down prior commitments and represent a huge waste of taxpayer funded time and money.
In HELCOM, for example, lengthy analyses have been made providing clear pathways and objectives for improving the marine environment. Efforts to decouple this work from the Directive show some Member States are fighting to keep RSCs as non-binding lame ducks, and slow down the reform process.
This MSFD is key for marine management, and in particular fisheries. It provides a methodology for understanding the health of fish stocks within an ecosystem, looking at the age and size distribution of fish and thus moving away from a narrow and somewhat misleading analysis based merely on mortality and biomass. Moreover, there are important regulations relating to habitats and the wider marine ecosystem, which provide legislative connections between fisheries and environment.