‘The marine environment is a precious heritage that must be protected, preserved and, where practicable, restored with ultimate aim of maintaining the biodiversity and providing diverse and dynamic oceans and seas which are clean, healthy and productive. In that respect, this Directive should, inter alia, promote the integration of environmental considerations into all relevant policy areas and deliver the environmental pillar for the future maritime policy for the European Union’

S1, p1 Marine Strategy Framework Directive

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive is clearly a product of its time and it involves a number of key ideas including:

• European Marine Policy: The MSFD is the environmental ‘pillar’ of what is a coherent view of European marine policy – the EU’s Blue Book; DG Environment are promoting the Directive

• The ecosystem approach in the broadest sense as a way delivering sustainability and well as having regard to ecosystem functioning; as such it links in very closely with UK high level marine policy

• The framework nature of its structure – based on the thinking and development of the Water Framework Directive – thus avoiding a series of individual directives on particular topics

• Socio-economics The explicit recognition of working to maintain the capacity of the seas to deliver existing goods and services as well as the strong recognition of socio-economic issues

The aim of this conference is to update delegates on the progress with the Marine Strategy Framework Directive in particular to cover the consultation on transposing the MSFD, Good Environmental Status and other implementation issues. There are five main themes of the conference which:

• Overview To provide a comprehensive overview of the progress with implementing the MSFD Directive in the UK. This Directive will have implications for all sea users, regulators and researchers and consulting organisations supporting their work

• Transposition The conference is timed to coincide with the consultation on the transposition of the Directive into UK law. The meeting will be of particular help to those who will be responsible for responding to that consultation.

• Good Environmental Status is at the heart the MSFD; considerable work is currently underway on preparing a common European view on how the descriptors should be applied. The meeting will be helpful to those people with an interest in the descriptor topics to assess progress on these: biodiversity, non-indigenous species, fish/shellfish, foodwebs, eutrophication, sea floor, contaminants, food quality, marine litter and energy /noise.

• Lessons and perspectives The level of work on the MSFD will be increasing steadily and key stakeholders will be expressing their views on the Directive. In particular the lessons from work and legal reactions to other Directives are particularly relevant at this point. The meeting will be especially relevant to stakeholders who are concerned about the way Directives are implemented and the interaction between existing directive and the MSFD.

• Implementation The timescale for the implementation is challenging and much more so than for the Water Framework Directive. The lessons of preparing plans and implementation for the WFD have been hard won and depend heavily upon both the supporting science and cost-benefit assessments. The conference will be helpful to stakeholders who are starting to consider the range of measures that implementing Directive will entail.