Proposal for a Council Decision establishing the position to be adopted on behalf of the European Union with regard to the proposals for amending Annexes II and III to the Protocol concerning Specially Protected Areas and Biological Diversity in the Mediterranean of the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and the Coastal Region of the Mediterranean at the seventeenth meeting of the Contracting Parties

The EU is a Contracting Party to the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and the Coastal Region of the Mediterranean ('the Barcelona Convention') and a Party to the Protocol concerning specially protected areas and biological diversity in the Mediterranean and the annexes thereto.

For the seventeenth meeting of the Contracting Parties to the Barcelona Convention and its Protocols, which took place in Paris (France) from 8 to 10 February 2012, the Secretariat of the Convention presented proposals to provide greater protection to several additional species by amending Annexes II and III to the Protocol.

The EU should support some of these proposals because they are scientifically sound, consistent with Union legislation and with the Union's commitment to international cooperation for the protection of biodiversity, and are in accordance with both Article 5 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the target agreed at the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2010 to significantly reduce the current rate of biodiversity loss by 2020.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2012)047: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2012:047:FIN

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