18th Inter-Secretariat Meeting
The 18th Inter-Secretariat meeting between Regional Agreement Secretariats, the European Commission and EMSA was held online on 15-16 February 2022 to exchange information and best practices in marine pollution prevention, preparedness and response across the European regional seas.
The Executive Secretary of the OSPAR Commission, Dominic Pattinson, referred to the outcome of the OSPAR Ministerial Meeting held on 1 October 2021 in Cascais, Portugal, and presented the North-East Atlantic Environment Strategy (NEAES 2030), under which a new Marine Litter Regional Action Plan would be develop by 2022.
The Chair of OTSOPA, Torben Iversen, gave an update on the ratification processes ongoing in relation to the accession of Spain and to MARPOL Annex VI monitoring operations. The aerial surveillance activities for 2020 were presented together with the response operations to incidents and exercises in 2021.
The Regional Agreements presented their relevant activities. The European Commission gave an update on the Port Reception Facilities Directive, the revision of the Ship Source Pollution Directive, the work on significant acute pollution events under the MSFD, the MSFD Revision and the Zero Pollution Action Plan, the EU Emissions Trading Systems (EU ETS) and the FuelEU Maritime initiative. EMSA introduced their activities and services.
On coming European calls for proposals, the meeting discussed funding priorities; although some were identified by the Regional Agreements there was a lack of resources to work on the project proposals in the short term.
