The European Commission proposal for a Marine Strategy: Lacking substance

The European Commission’s proposed Marine Strategy constitutes a highly inadequate approach to long-term protection of the European Seas. The main problem with the strategy is the restriction to a proposed directive in which only EU Member States are placed under obligation to develop their own environmental objectives and marine protection activity programmes. This ‘renationalisation’ results in the exclusion of key policy areas like Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and Common Fishery Policy in which the EU has centralised powers. Furthermore, there is no plan to refine EU environmental law relevant to marine protection and nor are there any provisions for the linking of EU-level action with the international conventions for the protection of the oceans.