SOS: Save Our Seas, Brussels calls

Oct 11, 2007, 3:41 GMT

Brussels - European Union member states must act together to save Europe's seas before short-term policies destroy them economically and environmentally, top EU officials said on Wednesday.

'We cannot afford maritime economic growth to have environmental degradation as its cost... Otherwise we are going to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs,' the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, told journalists.

On Wednesday, the Commission - the EU's executive - called on EU institutions, governments, industries and communities to coordinate their management of the sea in the interest of long-term survival.

'The strain (on the marine environment) is showing. We are at a crossroads in our relationship with the oceans,' an EC release said.

Twenty-two of the EU's 27 current members have direct access to Europe's seas - the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans and the Black, Mediterranean, North and Baltic Seas.

Forty per cent of the EU's income is generated in coastal areas, 60 per cent of EU tourists take their holidays on the coast and 90 per cent of the EU's foreign trade is carried by sea, Barroso said.

But throughout the Union's 50-year history, those seas have been covered by a bewildering patchwork of legislation.

Measures to combat illegal and destructive fishing techniques are largely in the hands of the Commission, national governments are in control of coast-guard systems, and marine rescue services can be run by national or regional governments, or even charities.

And in recent years, cross-border issues ranging from collapsing fish stocks to oil spills have exposed the flaws in that system - often at the cost of the seas themselves.

The Commission is therefore calling for all involved to coordinate their efforts, agreeing on long-term strategies to develop sectors as diverse as fishing, transport, energy generation and tourism without destroying the seas on which they are based.

'As all matters relating to our oceans and seas are inter-related, they must be developed in a joined-up way,' said EU Maritime Affairs Commissioner Joe Borg of Malta.

The idea won instant applause from environmental groups, with Green politicians in the European Parliament and wildlife organization WWF both welcoming the initiative.

But it risks running aground in the same storms as of old.

Responsibility for marine legislation is divided between the Commission and EU member states, with proposals from Brussels on sensitive marine issues - above all, fishing quotas - regularly bringing member states into direct confrontation with the executive.

In the last month alone, the EC has clashed with Poland over Warsaw's refusal to close its Baltic cod fishery, and with the seven member states who fish for blue-fin tuna over their failure to provide adequate information on catches.

Commission officials acknowledged the delicacy of the situation, with Borg reassuring member states that the call for coordination 'does not mean concentration of powers nor centralisation.'

And they were at pains to stress the economic and environmental benefits of better policy coordination.

An integrated policy would 'create the right climate' for sea-based industries such as tourism and energy generation, giving new openings to societies whose only income is from fishing, Borg said.

But with coordination between 27 states and Brussels needed even to start the process of coordinating their policies, the EC's SOS call looks like the first move in a very long and stormy voyage.