European Commission, Directorate General for Environment

Summary

The aim of this paper is to outline and describe the overall concept for checking and assessing the technical content of Member States’ reports on the Initial Assessment of their marine waters (Article 8), the determination of GES (Article 9) and the setting of environmental targets (Article 10).

This paper includes, inter alia, a description of the envisaged steps in the technical assessment process, the key questions that will need to be answered to assess the completeness, adequacy, consistency and coherence of Member States reports, an identification of the expected sources of information that will be used to answer the questions and make the assessments and the timetable foreseen for the assessment of Member State’s reports.

This paper is open for discussion.

EUROPEAN COMMISSION, DIRECTORATE GENERAL FOR ENVIRONMENT

SERVICE CONTRACT N° 070307/2011/606188/SER/D2 – TASK C

Concept paper on the technical assessment of Member States submissions required under Article 12 of the Marine Directive

Version 1.0

Contents

1Introduction

1.1Background

1.2Outcome of the Technical Assessment

1.3Purpose of this document

2General approach to technical assessment used to date

2.1.Methodological Framework

2.2.What information will be used in the assessment?

2.3.Timetable for checking and assessments of MS reports

2.4.The role of Regional Sea Conventions

3Assessment of Completeness

4Technical Assessment

4.1.Assessment of adequacy

4.2.Assessment of Consistency

4.3.Assessment of Coherence

Background / 1

1Introduction

1.1Background

According to Directive 2008/56/EC of 17 June 2008 establishing a framework for community action in the field of marine environmental policy (the Marine Directive), in July 2012, the Member States (MSs) should have completed their Initial Assessment (Article 8), the determination of GES (Article 9) and the setting of environmental targets (Article 10). Member States are then required to notify the Commission on the outcomes and products of the assessment and determinations by 15 October 2012 latest.

Following these submissions, the European Commission will have six months to assess these products and submit a report informing Member States whether in its opinion the elements notified are consistent with the Directive and provide guidance on any modification it considers necessary (Article 12 as reproduced in the box below).

As agreed upon at the last Marine Directors’ meeting, the Article 12 process is seen as an opportunity and a supporting mechanism for the follow-up process, which should ensure that ‘the lessons learnt are incorporated in the preparation of the next steps of the implementation with a view to closing existing gaps and increasing coherence and consistency’. This relates in particular to the development of monitoring programmes in 2014 and programmes of measures in 2015, and the revision of the assessment starting in 2018.

Article 12

Notifications and Commission’s assessment

On the basis of all the notifications made pursuant to Articles 9(2), 10(2) and 11(3) in respect of each marine region or subregion, the Commission shall assess whether, in the case of each Member State, the elements notified constitute an appropriate framework to meet the requirements of this Directive and may ask the Member State concerned to provide any additional information that is available and necessary.

In drawing up those assessments, the Commission shall consider the coherence of frameworks within the different marine regions or subregions and across the Community. Within six months of receiving all those notifications, the Commission informs Member States concerned whether, in its opinion, the elements notified are consistent with this Directive and provides guidance on any modifications it considers necessary.

The aim of this paper is to outline and describe the overall concept for checking and assessing the technical content of Member States’ submissions. It includes:

• Illustration and description of the envisaged steps in the technical assessment process;

• The key questions that will need to be answered to assess the completeness, adequacy, consistency and coherence of Member States reports;

• Identification of the potential/expected sources of information that will be used to answer the questions and make the assessments.

1.2Outcome of the Technical Assessment

The first Commission assessment, six months after submission by Member States of their reports, would have to be by necessity undertaken at a relatively low level of detail.

Potential outcomes of the technical assessment could be an overall document with key messages and linkages to other relevant policies, a regional coherence report and individual Member States reports with advice and guidance. In these reports, some elements might need immediate attention and improvement by Member States, for instance when the applied framework is not consistent. Some elements would be best addressed when developing monitoring programmes, for instance because the basic data is not available. Others can best be incorporated in the next MSFD cycle, for instance because there is now a clear gap in knowledge, or in a review of the COM Decision.

At a later stage, after the 6 months, an in-depth analysis for different descriptors/elements could be carried out.

1.3Purpose of this document

The purpose of this paper is to describe the overall approach for the technical assessment of Member States’ products required under Articles 8, 9 and 10 of the Marine Directive, that are due to be notified to the Commission by 15 October 2012 latest.

It identifies the means of checking the completeness of the information provided and the key aspects of the assessment of adequacy, consistency and coherence. It also provides an indication of the intended depth of analysis for the various topics and aspects of the respective Articles. The intention is to get feedback from Member States and stakeholders on the overall approach and priority setting. An open discussion should benefit both the Commission and the Member States and will take initially place at the MSCG meeting which will be held on 21/22 February 2012. The discussion should continue with a view to finalise the concept paper by June 2012 with the Marine Directors meeting.

General approach / 1

2General approach to technical assessment used to date

The figure below shows the general approach to this type of assessment that the Commission has used to date, for example on the Water Framework Directive, and would use as a basis for the Marine Directive.

A clear distinction should be the made between the role of the Commission who is solely responsible for assessing what is and what is not compliant in terms of the MSFD, and the consultants to the Commission who will undertake a technical checking and assessment of Member States’ reports and submissions (i.e. on completeness, adequacy, consistency and coherence) thereby providing the information to the Commission for any follow-up actions and communications with Member States.

The first step would be the assessment of completeness of Member States’ electronic reports. This first assessment allows the identification of important gaps, e.g. missing information for a particular GES descriptor.

As a second step, the reports would be subject to a technical assessment and their contents checked for adequacy, coherence and consistency. The purpose of the technical assessment would be to cover all potential contents of the reports. In this sense, the depth of the assessment would be necessarily limited.

Finally, specific topics that are deemed of key importance and have been identified in the technical assessment stage as potentially problematic or of strategic importance may be subject to an in-depth assessment. However, such in-depth assessments will be carried out later and are not part of the Article 12 process itself.

These different elements of the technical assessment are described in more detail in Section 3 below.

2.1.Methodological Framework

This document identifies questions that would be the basis of the technical assessment of Member State’s reports and information, as part of the Article 12 process. The questions provide an indication of the intended depth of analysis for the various Marine Directive topics. In some cases they are necessarily broad, and should be subject to further elaboration and specification at a later stage of the process. These questions would address how the technical and legal provisions of the Directive have been implemented. Some questions are also purely informative, i.e. describe the situation, but are not necessarily directly linked to an obligation of the Marine Directive. The questions identified here could be the basis for the development of detailed check-lists to be used in the technical assessment. The assessment will primarily use the information provided in the reporting sheets, but also other information provided by Member States, i.e. the paper reports or the background documents (see Section 4 for more details).

The Commission (DG ENV, JRC) would also use the results of the technical assessment and the Member States’ reports to make an evaluation of the implementation of the Marine Directive, in cooperation with the EEA (Marine Directive Article 20.3.b) where it relates to the status of the marine environment, defining a baseline for the later evaluation of achievements and effectiveness of the Directive.

The Commission (DG ENV, JRC) and the EEA intend to keep a dialogue with the Member States during the technical assessment of the Member States’ reports as much as possible. Moreover, the Commission may request additional information from Member States where the provided information is deemed incomplete or unclear. In this context, Working Group DIKE, GES and ESA could serve as platforms for discussion of wider topics affecting several Member States.

2.2.What information will be used in the assessment?

For reporting under Articles 8, 9 and 10, it can be expected that Member States will provide one or more text-based reports ('paper' reports) covering the three articles collectively or separately. These are likely to be received by the Commission in paper format, but should also be transmitted in electronic format (as Word files) via the EEA's ReportNet facility, so that they can be held in WISE (Water Information System for Europe).

Following agreement with the Marine Directors, Member States will also provide their reports under these articles according to the structure of so-called 'reporting sheets', provided electronically through ReportNet to be held in a marine module of WISE. These reporting sheets aim to capture the information in a structured and standardised manner across all Member States, which greatly facilitates their analysis and comparison.

Because the Commission has only six months in which to undertake its Article 12 assessment, the main basis for the assessment is expected to be this 'reporting sheet' information. However, the 'paper' reports are expected to contain valuable information and explanation and as such provide an important additional source of information for the Article 12 assessment.

The reporting sheets have been developed in consultation with Member States and provide the specifications for the content of the reports. Once agreed with Member States, they will be subsequently converted into a schema and database tool which enables the information to be captured in standardised formats (e.g. use of specified data formats and term lists) for upload into the WISE system, and enable an electronic and automatic analysis of the information. In the reporting sheets the 'priority' information for the 2012 assessment (the ‘priority fields’ in dark orange cells) will be provided by Member States by 15 October 2012; the remaining information in the reporting sheets (light orange cells) will be provided by 15 April 2013. This approach reflects the conclusion of the December 2011 meeting of the Marine Directors, who agreed on the prioritisation of the reporting sheets i.e. a number of fields in each reporting sheet are identified as ‘priority fields’ and will cover the most critical information necessary for the Article 12 assessment. While the overall concept paper and the ‘advanced’ reporting sheets (for Articles 9 and 10) have been approved, all reporting sheets and guidance document should be finalised for endorsement at the June 2012 meeting of the Marine Directors.

The information in the reporting sheets ‘priority fields’ would constitute the basis for the technical assessment, as it is not realistic to look beyond the priority fields in the reporting sheets given the limited time available. With this in mind, the paper reports are likely to be used to provide extra clarity or detail, including the overall approach adopted by the Member State. In addition,the level of detail of the assessments and reports may vary among Member States and across marine regions. In some cases the Member States’ report may include sufficient detail in its chapters and annexes so that no additional background document will be necessary, but in some cases it is expected that not all the relevant information for the assessment will be included in the electronic reports and “paper” reports; it may therefore be necessary to seek additional background documents

2.3.Timetable for checking and assessments of MS reports

The timetable for the assessment of Member States reports is foreseen as follows:

General approach / 1

The Commission’s Art 12 report after “6-month” report will contain a high-level analysis of all elements reported. This analysis should identify key issues and best practices and serve as advice and guidance to the Member States on the next steps for the implementation of the Directive. For example, a key issue could be the identification of a significant gap in the available information for a given topic across all Member States.

In addition to the formal Article 12 report, the Commission may provide in-depth analyses on certain aspects or issues e.g. a specific descriptor/element or common issues such as the scale of the assessments. These would be prepared with support from the EEA, JRC or other stakeholders such as ICES in relation to descriptor 3. These in-depth assessments would make fuller use of all information provided by the Member States, including supporting data, metadata and the text descriptive fields of the reporting sheets, along with background documents. It should be noted that in the course of the technical assessment, other topics for in-depth assessment may be identified.

2.4.The role of Regional Sea Conventions

The Regional Sea Conventions could play a role in three different phases of the Article 12 assessment.

1. Firstly, before the deadline for the notification of their report by Member States, Regional Sea Conventions could provide complementary source of information e.g. through the preparation of ‘roof reports’ for their respective marine regions. This information should be then included as part of the official notification of the Member States in order to be considered in the technical assessment.

1. Secondly, during the Article 12 six-month technical assessment, support could be provided by Regional Sea Conventions e.g. through a workshop to validate the assessment findings in relation to coherence within the same marine regions.

1. Once the six-month assessment is completed, Regional Sea Conventions could play a key role for the subsequent in-depth assessments. The Regional Sea Conventions could peer-review the Article 12 assessment in order to make recommendations for the future improvement of the coherence of different elements e.g. indicators, coverage of impacts and pressures, timescale for targets, but also for the follow-up process of the Directive’s implementation e.g. in terms of monitoring programme and measures. This could contribute to the preparation of work planning for the future Common Implementation Strategy at EU level and/or the regional sea conventions with particular emphasis on creating even more synergies and complementarities between these work programmes.

Completeness / 1

3Assessment of Completeness

The assessment of completeness aims at checking whether the Member States’ reports cover all the elements required by the Directive under Articles 8, 9 and 10 and the Commission Decision of 1 September 2010 on criteria and methodological standards on good environmental status of marine waters. It would be mainly based on the information provided through the reporting sheets, in the priority fields. For this purpose, summaries of the electronic reporting will be prepared which set out all the provided information in a readable format per Member State and/or marine sub-region.