Borg heads for port to find inspiration

Joe Borg, European commissioner for fisheries and maritime affairs, is looking to the coasts of Europe for maritime policy inspiration.

"You are the source of inspiration for the project," he said to the regional representatives, the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions of Europe (CPMR) last year. "You are the cause and the main reason to embark on this process and you are the ones who will benefit from a future maritime policy."

European seaports and coastal communities went into decline during the 20th century, as fish stocks plummeted and roads and airways took traffic away from shipping routes. Tourism is still limited to the prettiest, most accessible areas of coast, and the variability of national, EU and international environmental codes has contributed to a decline in the quality of many coastal waters.

Claudio Martini, CPMR president, says that a European maritime policy is long overdue. "We have never had a strategic approach to the seas," he says. "The political centre of Europe has for a long time been inland, so the reality of all our coastal towns has never really been taken into account. Now is the time to change that."

Southern European ports in Italy and France could be given new life by a co-ordinated maritime strategy, says Martini. Baltic ports could see the same benefits from trade with Russia.

But EU ports also need to be part of an improved infrastructure, he warns. "Maritime regions often suffer from the fact that they are not connected to each other and to inland cities. The first problem is accessibility."

The rapid growth of Asian industries will make the sea an increasingly attractive way to transport goods, he says. "There is huge growth here; the EU could be the crossroads for maritime commercial exchange," he says.

The CPMR is working hard to make sure this happens. A conference in Santander, Spain, this Friday and Saturday (13-14 April) will look at the regions and maritime safety. This will analyse progress made since the Erika and Prestige disasters, which saw EU regions struggling to clean up maritime oil spills. A second meeting in the Azores in July will bring together CPMR representatives, Borg, and the Portuguese presidency of the EU to discuss maritime policies and globalisation.

The group does not plan to publish its final priorities until June, the last month of a one-year consultation on a maritime green paper. But a draft position paper shows that the CPMR will be asking the Commission not to shy away from the challenges of drawing up a single strategy for EU oceans and seas.

First of all, says the draft, the EU needs a better way of managing sea and coastal policies. "Aside from any new EU instruments that might be envisaged," says the draft, "the actual interest…lies in improving the overall governance of the [maritime] policy areas."

Regional authorities are best placed to do this, says the regional group. The early years of a maritime policy could be used to set up ‘regional maritime monitoring committees’, the draft suggests, under which interest groups could develop trial maritime schemes. These would have to take account of differences between EU seas and oceans.

CPMR already has six geographical commissions that could be used as a model. These look at the Atlantic, Baltic, North Sea, Inter-Mediterranean, Balkan and Black Seas, and Islands.

The CPMR draft adds that the Commission will be needed to find the best regional maritime approaches currently being used, and to pull together all the different regional networks and programmes, since most EU countries do not have a maritime ministry.

Martini says that getting government attention will be the biggest challenge for any future maritime policy. "I am optimistic about developing a strategy that will be up to our expectations," he says. "I am a bit less optimistic about getting European politicians to take account of it. We will have to work hard to make sure they turn a single maritime policy into reality."

Joe Borg, European commissioner for fisheries and maritime affairs, is looking to the coasts of Europe for maritime policy inspiration.