COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT

IMPACT ASSESSMENT

Accompanying the document

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL

Better situational awareness by enhanced cooperation across maritime surveillance authorities: next steps within the Common Information Sharing Environment for the EU maritime domain

Table of contents

1. Executive Summary Sheet 6

2. Introduction and scene setter 9

3. Procedural issues and consultation of interested parties. 12

3.1. Identification. 12

3.2. Impact assessment steering group. 12

3.3. Consultation and expertise. 12

3.3.1. Public consultation. 12

3.3.2. Other consultations. 13

3.3.3. Dialogues and consultations with other Institutions, other Services and Member States 13

3.3.4. Consultancy studies. 15

4. Problem definition. 17

4.1. The problem.. 17

4.2. What is causing this problem?. 20

4.3. Who is affected by the problems and what are the consequences for them?. 24

4.4. The baseline scenario. 25

4.4.1. Evolution of the baseline scenario. 27

4.5. EU right to act, added value, proportionality and subsidiarity. 29

4.5.1. The right to act – treaty basis. 29

4.5.2. Added value of EU action. 29

4.5.3. Subsidiarity and Proportionality. 30

4.5.4. Coherence with existing policies and initiatives. 30

5. Objectives. 32

5.1. General objectives. 32

5.2. Specific objectives. 34

6. Policy options. 36

6.1. Selecting the policy options. 36

6.2. Discarded options. 36

6.3. Retained policy options. 37

6.3.1. Option 1- No further EU action. 37

6.3.2. Option 2 -Voluntary measures. 38

6.3.3. Option 3 -Binding measures. 40

6.3.4. Combination of policy options. 41

7. Assessment of options. 41

7.1. Qualitative assessment of options. 42

7.1.1. Option 1 – No EU action (baseline scenario) 42

7.1.2. Option 2 – Voluntary measures. 43

7.1.3. Option 3 – Binding measures. 46

7.2. Quantitative assessment 47

7.2.1. Economic, social and environmental impacts of implementing the CISE project 47

7.2.2. Economic, social and environmental impacts of each Policy option. 49

7.3. Assessment of impacts on fundamental rights. 53

7.4. Assessment of Cost and administrative burden. 53

7.4.1. Costs of the policy options. 53

7.4.2. Cost at EU level versus costs at Member States level 55

8. comparing the options. 56

8.1. Effectiveness in obtaining the objectives. 56

8.2. Benefits. 57

8.3. Cost 58

8.4. Conclusion. 58

9. Monitoring and evaluation. 59

10. Annex 1: Summary of public consultation. 61

11. Annex 2: Summary of the Member States survey. 78

1.1 Cost of current maritime surveillance. 78

1.2 Limitations to information sharing. 79

1.3 Benefits from CISE.. 80

1.4 Impacts. 81

12. Annex 3: maritime surveillance authorities in EU Member States. 83

11. Annex 4: Connection with other EU policies related to eGovernment 100

The Malmö Declaration. 100

The Granada Declaration. 100

Europe 2020. 100

Digital Agenda for Europe. 101

European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015. 102

The ISA programme. 103

Table of Figures and Tables

Table 1- Overview of the quantitative assessment (source: COWI study) 50

Table 2 - Cost of the policy options (source: Gartner study) 53

Table 3 - Comparison of the options 54

Figure 1- Limitations in access to information (source: Member States survey) 17

Figure 2 - Overview of data gap assessment (source: TAG work) 24

Figure 3 - European Interoperability Framework (source: Commission) 30

Figure 4- Benefits in terms of surveillance tasks (source: Member States survey) 32

Figure 5 - Central cost versus Member States cost (source: Gartner study) 53

1. Executive Summary Sheet

Impact assessment in support of a Communication on a Common information sharing environment for the EU maritime domain

A. Need for action

Why? What is the problem being addressed?

The current information exchange between maritime surveillance authorities in the EU is suboptimal and leads to efficiency losses, duplication of data collection efforts and unnecessary operational costs. The link that would require further development, building on existing solutions and developments, relates to common standards which would allow for the interoperability of sectorial systems and machine readable information services. This would further enhance the possibilities for these authorities to have getting access to all the information necessary for their operative work. The main causes are real or perceived legal limitations, technical and cultural barriers which are preventing the desired information exchange. Under the baseline scenario, the situation is expected to improve also in the future due to enhanced co-operation between different maritime surveillance functions (maritime safety and security, border control, customs, general law enforcement, fisheries control, environmental control and defence) but is expected to remain suboptimal in the absence of an interoperability framework at EU level which would allow authorities to communicate and exchange information services more effectively. The relevant stakeholders are maritime surveillance authorities at national level (national coastguards etc.) and at EU level (FRONTEX, EMSA, EFCA, EDA, etc.).

What is this initiative expected to achieve?

The purpose of this initiative is to ensure that maritime surveillance information and services collected by one maritime sector and considered necessary/useful for the activities of other maritime sectors or functions can be efficiently shared with those sectors. Of particular importance is the objective to achieve enhanced exchange of information services between civilian and military authorities. This objective will have to be achieved through the removal of real or perceived legal and cultural limitations and through the use of an interoperability standard which would allow for this information exchange, based on existing models. Better exchange of information services are expected to lead to less duplication of data collection efforts, more cost efficient maritime surveillance operations and a better maritime surveillance awareness in EU waters.

What is the value added of action at the EU level?

Information exchange between maritime surveillance authorities/functions are of a transnational nature since it normally entails co-operation first and foremost at regional or sea basin level. Moreover, rules and conditions for transnational sharing of maritime surveillance information between authorities of a same sector are already regulated at EU level and involve EU agencies.

B. Solutions

What legislative and non-legislative policy options have been considered? Is there a preferred choice or not? Why?

The impact assessment considers 3 options with different sub-options. Several options (including one to review all existing information exchange systems) were discarded from the beginning as it would be counterproductive to the overall objectives of the initiative as making past work obsolete. The three options are 1) the baseline scenario (no further action at EU level) 2) voluntary measures,(including sub-options for a Communication by the Commission, the adoption of a handbook and best practices through a Recommendation and a joint undertaking) and 3) binding measures (including sub-options for revisions of existing sector legislation at EU level, an EU Regulation for a Common Information Sharing Environment, and a technical Regulation on interoperability standards). The preferred option is a mix of several sub-options, including the adoption of a Commission Communication, a handbook with best practices adopted through a Recommendation as well as revisions of sector legislation to remove unjustified legal limitations.

Who supports which option?

All input from the stakeholder consultation and a specific survey among the Member States as well as other preparatory actions (in particular pilot projects involving Member States representatives) demonstrate a firm support among stakeholders for EU action on this initiative. Stakeholders are however more divided as to the choice between binding versus non-binding options. The overall conclusion of stakeholders seem to be that binding measures are necessary but should be limited to the removal of any remaining unjustified legal limitations and technical barriers whereas non-binding measures through guidance should tackle cultural barriers at national level. This conclusion is in line with the conclusion of the impact assessment.

C. Impacts of the preferred option

What are the benefits of the preferred option?

The overall potential impact (benefit) of CISE is estimated to range between 1.6 billion € and 4.2 billion € over ten years as from the moment CISE is in place. These potential benefits of CISE as quantified in economic terms have social and environmental relevance as they stem from increased success in reducing goods being smuggled into the EU, oil polluting the sea, illegal unregulated and unreported fisheries, accidents at sea, irregular immigration, smuggling of small arms/light weapons, piracy and most importantly, succeeding in saving more lives at sea. The mix of preferred policy options mentioned in the preceding section is estimated to reap about 80% of the above mentioned overall economic impact (benefit).

What are the costs of the preferred option?

The total cost over 10 years for the preferred option is estimated at 133M€. EU central cost amounts to 26 M€ and Member States cost amounts to 107 M€ over 10 years. The cost of implementing CISE depends to a large extent on how each Member State may want to organise itself internally to connect to the environment, on the number of information services that will be provided in the environment and on the large variety of existing and planned IT systems. It is proposed not to impose any organisational structure to the Member States and let Member States connect to CISE their IT systems per sectorial functions. It is estimated that the above mentioned cost are necessary to reach the preferred policy mix reaping about 80% of the above mentioned overall economic impact (benefit).

How will businesses, SMEs and micro-enterprises be affected?

This initiative concerns only maritime surveillance authorities in the EU. Private companies such as SMEs and micro enterprises are not directly affected by this proposal. They will however benefit from a better business environment as enhanced maritime surveillance will ensure cleaner, safer and more secure seas as fundamental conditions to fostering blue growth, sustainable development and security of the EU maritime domain. Further, CISE provides business opportunities as new information services and technologies will be developed by businesses for the said public authorities.

Will there be significant impacts on national budgets and administrations?

No. Cost per Member State amounts to between 2 M€ and 4 M€ for the ten year budgeting period, to adhere to a common information sharing environment. No other costs are envisaged.

Will there be other significant impacts?

The initiative will hopefully lead to a smarter use of existing resources and funds and simplify co-operation between maritime surveillance authorities in accordance with the refit initiative of the Commission. It is not expected to have any negative impacts on fundamental rights of citizens, competitiveness of private companies or international relations. It is expected that enhancing knowledge and improving maritime situational awareness could potentially lead to the reduction of threats and risks by 30% on average, while this effect will of course not be uniform over the type of risk and the different maritime areas of European interest.

D. Follow up

When will the policy be reviewed?

The development of this policy initiative will be reviewed after 4 years. Progress will be discussed regularly within the framework of a Member State expert group.

2. Introduction and scene setter

The purpose of this impact assessment is to examine to what extent EU action is necessary to enhance the exchange of maritime surveillance information services[1] between the maritime surveillance authorities[2] in the EU.

The creation of a Common Information Sharing Environment (hereinafter CISE) for the EU maritime domain[3] has been discussed in a EU context since 2007[4] and has so far been the subject matter of two Communications of the Commission in 2009 and 2010[5]. These discussions have already produced some success stories and gradually lead to enhanced information exchange, in particular between civilian surveillance authorities.[6] However, further improvements seem feasible to enhance exchange not only between civilian maritime surveillance authorities, but in particular information exchange between civilian and military authorities.

This work should be seen against the background of an increasing number of situations and events which can negatively affect the EU maritime domain today and within the next 15 years. In short, the EU maritime domain is exposed to various and growing man-made, accidental and natural threats and risks[7].

These threats and risks can partially be explained by the fact that trade with third countries and movements of persons across borders have increased steadily in recent years and we can expect that these movements will continue to increase in the future.

A significant proportion of entries to the EU are seaborne. For example, 74% of the EU's external trade is carried by sea[8]. Increased number of threats therefore risks entering the EU by sea and may be spread through Member States within a very short period of time.

Detecting, checking and thwarting those threats - from post 9/11 terrorism, influx of illegal drugs and arms, illegal immigration to customs fraud and environmental damages or even from unintended accidents or natural events - are crucial to ensure the fundamental conditions for the safety, the security and prosperity of the EU and its population.

It falls under the responsibility of the maritime surveillance authorities of the Member States to face those threats. Their responsibility is not only to carry out operations at sea, but also inter alia to ensure the effective understanding of all activities carried out at sea and events occurred at sea that could impact the security, safety, economy or environment of the European Union and its Member States, this is commonly referred to as "maritime domain awareness"[9]. Seven different functions are relevant in this context: (1) maritime safety (including search and rescue), maritime security and prevention of pollution caused by ships, (2) fisheries control, (3) marine pollution preparedness and response, marine environment protection (4) customs, (5) border control, (6) general law enforcement and (7) defence.[10]

The increased maritime surveillance and control needs which are required to face these threats put an additional burden on the maritime surveillance authorities. Increased control activities cost money however and putting additional funds into maritime surveillance is not evident in times of financial crisis, when many national and EU authorities are reducing their costs. This means that maritime surveillance authorities of the EU Member States are obliged to become more effective and cost efficient when carrying out their duties.

There is in other words a need to enhance co-operation with other maritime surveillance authorities of other functions at national level and/or of other Member States. Such co-operation would inter alia strive for more effective and coordinated actions at sea, create synergies, mutual knowledge and sharing of experience/actions at sea. Information services are needed to foster such co-operation. The subject matter for this impact assessment is to a large extent about better regulations and making better use of existing solutions in in the area of maritime surveillance along the spirit of the REFIT initiative of the Commission[11] rather than creating new rules.

Many Member States have already or are in the process of setting up national initiatives to this end and initiatives have been launched at EU level. One example of EU level initiatives is the 2009 initiative for the coast guard functions cooperation through the Forum of the Heads of the Coast Guard Functions of the European Union and Schengen associated countries (so called "European Coast Guard Functions Forum")[12]. A Commission study looking into the feasibility of improved co-ordination between bodies carrying out coast guard functions at European level is currently on-going. The very preliminary results of this study are that suboptimal information sharing is a general obstacle to enhanced collaboration. Suggestions for improvement include simplified procedures for the adoption of analytical standards and procedures, the development of tools to report on the information shared as well as the encouragement of automatic and cross sector information sharing. Another example is the number of Service Level Agreements on information exchange which has been concluded between various EU agencies[13].

These initiatives for a more integrated and co-operative approach to the surveillance of our seas, coasts and oceans have inter alia been inspired by the development of the Integrated Maritime Policy (IMP) of the EU[14]. Its main aim is to increase co-ordination between various sectorial maritime policies within the EU to enhance their effectiveness and cost efficiency. The Blue book on the IMP[15] has identified work towards more integrated maritime surveillance activities supported inter alia by the creation of a Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE) as an important step in this direction.

CISE is also a part of wider Commission objectives expressed in its 'Europe 2020' strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. By helping to ensuring safe, secure and clean seas, CISE can support the fundamental conditions for sustainable (blue) growth.

CISE also contributes to the 'Digital Agenda for Europe' and to the ISA Programme, which supports the delivery of European public services by fostering cross border and cross sector interoperability, and thus contributes to the European single digital market as well as to computer literacy.

CISE further fosters the 'Innovation Union' both in the public and private sectors through the development of new technologies and by engaging in new ways of cooperation between about 400 relevant public authorities within the EU/EEA, saving time and money.

As a tool helping public authorities to optimise the deployment of their assets, CISE could also contribute to the 'Resource-efficiency' flagship initiative under the Europe 2020 strategy that supports the shift towards a resource-efficient, low-carbon economy for sustainable growth.

In particular to achieve safe, secure and clean oceans through enhanced management and control. It is targeting the control aspects of the management of the sea and should therefore be seen as complementary to a number of existing measures within this area, including the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, the CFP Regulation, the Reporting Formalities Directive, the EUROSUR Regulation, as well as other non-legislative initiatives such as EMODNET, innovation in the blue economy, and blue growth. The main idea of CISE is to ensure that the systems collecting data under any such initiatives will become interoperable, thus allowing for example data collected under EMODNET to be available to maritime surveillance authorities of other sectors when needed.

Member States, Council and other stakeholders have so far been very supportive of these initiatives.[16]

3. Procedural issues and consultation of interested parties

3.1. Identification

The objective of this impact assessment is to provide an analysis of the options for EU action to implement CISE. The agenda planning reference is 2012/MARE/002.

This impact assessment aims at:

• Analysing the need for EU action, and

• Determining the most suitable option and delivery instrument for this action.

3.2. Impact assessment steering group

An impact assessment steering group was created in June 2012 and met 9 times between 20th June 2012 and 24 October 2013. The Impact Assessment Steering Group was composed of Legal Service (SJ), Secretariat-General (SG), Directorate-General for Mobility and Transports (MOVE), Directorate-General for Home Affairs (HOME), Directorate-General for Justice (JUST), Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union (TAXUD), Directorate-General for Humanitarian Aid and civil protection (ECHO), Directorate –General for Enterprise and Industry (ENTR), Directorate-General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology (CNECT), Directorate-General for Informatics (DIGIT), European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), Joint Research Centre (JRC) and European External Action Service (EEAS).

3.3. Consultation and expertise

Stakeholders' consultations referred to in this document took place in several fora which are listed below.

3.3.1. Public consultation

On 14 June 2013, a three-month public consultation was launched in support of the present impact assessment. The consultation ended on 14 September 2013. A total of 33 responses were received, among which 24 responses were made on behalf of organisations/administrations. The overall result of this consultation was as follows:

· Overall recognition that co-operation and information exchange between maritime surveillance authorities of different sectors is unsatisfactory and could be improved;

· Overall recognition that improved co-operation and information exchange could help reduce cost and improve efficiency of surveillance activities;

· Overall belief that efforts need to be stepped up at EU level to address possible legal limitations and, technical and cultural barriers and that these efforts have to be achieved through binding measures where necessary to address certain limitations or barriers.

Further details regarding the results of this consultation can be found in Annex 1.

3.3.2. Other consultations

In addition, a specific survey targeting Member States experts on maritime surveillance took place between May 2013 and June 2013. This survey was focusing on cost aspects, possible limitations to information exchange and the potential benefits of enhanced information exchange. The result of this Member State survey was as follows:

· Overall difficulty for Member States to provide anything more than indicative estimations of what the cost aspects of maritime surveillance activities could be, but nevertheless an expectation that increased information exchange could lead to less duplication of efforts and thus reduced cost;

· Confirmation that there are existing or perceived legal, technical and cultural limitations which impede optimal information exchange between maritime surveillance authorities. The perceived impact of these limitations varies to a large extent from one Member State to the next.

· Confirmation that enhanced information could have moderate to significant benefits for maritime surveillance activities. Potential benefits include better response capability, better surveillance outcomes, cost savings for information gathering and better use of assets.

Further details regarding the results of this consultation can be found in Annex 2.

3.3.3. Dialogues and consultations with other Institutions, other Services and Member States

The Council of the European Union, the European Parliament and the European Economic and Social Committee have provided support to the CISE project through inter alia the following initiatives:

In 2012, European Ministers called for the CISE project to be operational by 2020 in the so called "Limassol declaration"[17].

Since 2008, the Council have issued a number of Council conclusions in support of the CISE project[18].

In 2010 and 2012, the European Parliament called on the European Union to create a common information sharing environment in a Resolution on the Integrated Maritime Policy of the EU[19] and to invest meaningfully in further developing the CISE framework, in a report on the maritime dimension of the Common Security and Defence Policy[20].

European Economic and Social Committee issued a favourable Opinion[21] on the 2010 Communication by the Commission on CISE referred to above.

The European Data Protection Supervisor will be consulted on the CISE project before the adoption of the policy package.

Maritime surveillance authorities were closely involved in the process up to now:

· A specific Member State expert sub-group on integrated maritime surveillance was established in September 2009 and has since then met 11 times. The purpose of this expert group is to discuss and provide political guidance on maritime surveillance in general and on the CISE project in particular. This group involves representatives from all EU and EEA Member States. All relevant EU Agencies are also invited to participate in this work: the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) (transport), the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the EU (FRONTEX), the European Environmental Agency (EEA), European Police Office (EUROPOL), the European Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA), the European Satellite Centre (EUSC) and the European Defence Agency (EDA).

· A specific Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on integrated of maritime surveillance was established in November 2010 and has since then met 15 times. The purpose of this group is to obtain technical guidance from the different functions on the CISE project. TAG is composed of national or EU[22] experts representing the seven sectorial functions, as well as representatives from all the above mentioned European agencies. Each TAG member has been nominated by its sectorial function and has the task to liaise with counterparts from all involved countries inside his/her sector, to ensure as wide representation as possible.

· Further, two large scale CISE pilot projects ('BLUEMASSMED'[23] and 'MARSUNO'[24]) were launched in 2010 and finalised in 2012. The final reports of these projects are found on the indicated webpages. The purpose of these pilot projects was to test the feasibility of CISE in practice, in two sea areas, the Northern Sea basins and the Mediterranean Sea including its Atlantic approaches. Together these projects involved 14 EU Countries, Norway, and Russia as an observer, with 61 participating authorities representing all seven sectors. Both projects provided encouraging final conclusions which have been taken into account in this impact assessment.

· These pilot projects have been followed up by a new project, the on-going CISE Cooperation Project Maritime surveillance[25], involving 43 public authorities from 12 Member States and Norway. Five EU Agencies and other organisations are associated to this project. This project aims at working on issues of relevance for the establishment of CISE based on selected use cases such as information services identification, cost-benefit analysis, definition of conditions for access and specifications of common data formats and semantics. The stakeholder participation in this project continues to be high.

· Another IMP sponsored project of relevance for this policy initiative is the on-going project on the evolution of the SafeSeaNet which inter alia is assessing how this system and platform could be further developed to enhance the needs of the sectorial functions and support the National Single Window developments in a CISE concept and the further exchange of data and enhanced interoperability between relevant systems.

· The development of CISE has been discussed with stakeholders at numerous Conferences and events since 2009, including the European Maritime Day where dedicated workshops on CISE were held in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. The interest and support from stakeholders in these workshops have been high.

3.3.4. Consultancy studies

The Commission has commissioned several specific studies on specific issues related to CISE in support of this impact assessment, inter alia a study on the IT cost of implementing CISE and a study to assess its likely impact. In addition, the Commission carried out internally a study on technical architectures and possible governance structures. These studies will become available once the policy initiative supported by this Impact Assessment becomes public[26].

The resulting assumptions underpinning the quantitative assessment of CISE are summarised in section 7.2.1 of the present report.

3.3.5 Incorporating comments from the Impact assessment board

A report was sent to the Impact assessment board on 6 November 2013.

In its opinion of 6 December 2013[27] the Board rendered a positive overall opinion but recommended that the report should be improved in order to 1) provide a clearer policy context and how this initiative relates to other relevant EU policy initiatives and identify more clearly technical and legal barriers to information exchange and the concrete consequences for the relevant sectors 2) under the baseline scenario, present more clearly the evolution of the data sharing situation across sectors and further substantiate the administrative burden implications for national authorities, 3) explain which EU sector rules which would be targeted for legislative amendments and the views of stakeholders and 4) improve the analysis of the impacts of the policy options by clarifying the assumptions underpinning the quantitative assessment.

In a revised version of this report submitted to Inter-service consultation, these comments were addressed in the following way:

- a more detailed description of how this policy initiative relates to other relevant EU policies has been provided in the introduction.

- further details on maritime surveillance information systems have been provided in the problem definition, with examples of data currently being collected. It should be underlined however that the purpose of this policy initiative is not to further regulate, create new legal obligations or determine at EU level in detail which data sets that can be the subject matter of further information exchange under CISE. The purpose is simply to provide the means for such information exchange by ensuring the interoperability of existing information exchange systems. It is therefore for the Member States to determine which information they would like to exchange through CISE (if not already an obligation under EU rules). The reason why further cooperation is needed to develop technical interoperability solutions has been explained further.

- further concrete examples have also been added in the problem definition as well as a further clarification of the relevant legal limitations and technical barriers.

- the baseline scenario has been updated with further information on administrative burden and on service level agreements between EU agencies. However it has not been possible to make a further assessment of the evolution of the baseline scenario other than the already existing preliminary assessment by the joint research centre of the Commission since the effects can only be fully assessed once this legislation referred to has entered into force. In addition, it is not possible to make a further assessment of the evolution of data exchanges at national level since many of these data exchanges fall outside the scope of EU level intervention and since it is not intended that such data exchanges will be subject to EU level intervention other than to facilitate the means for such information exchange by ensuring the interoperability of information systems.

- the content of the policy options have been updated and are now more detailed. It has been further clarified that the intention is not to create any new data collection efforts. It is rather to reduce such efforts and data duplication by envisaging multiuse of the data being collected. Further, it has been specified that any legislative proposal to amend sector legislation or propose new legislation would be accompanied with an impact assessment. The idea of adopting a handbook as a recommendation has been abandoned for the reasons indicated by the board. However, exact indications of sectorial legislation which needed is premature and yet to be identified.

The impact of each option has been assessed further, in particular for a handbook. The administrative burden for national authorities has been reassessed. In particular, more details have been provided on how to develop IT standards for interoperability and on the involvement of Member States.

4. Problem definition

4.1. The problem

The increasing challenges, threats risks and vulnerabilities[28] that the EU maritime domain is exposed to is putting additional burdens on the up to 400 relevant maritime surveillance authorities of the EU Member States to ensure the safety and security of the EU and its population. The additional workload that these authorities are confronted with is not matched with additional resources, which in turn forces them to become more resource and cost efficient.

The preparatory actions referred to in section 3 have demonstrated that the current information exchange between maritime surveillance authorities is suboptimal and can lead to efficiency losses, duplication of data collection efforts and unnecessary operational costs. In many cases, information exchange does not take place because (1) maritime surveillance authorities do not know that the information is available somewhere; (2) maritime surveillance authorities do not know that they have information of interest for others (3) it is considered too complex to do and (4), may be most fundamentally, there is no culture of doing so.

The link that would require further development, building on existing solutions and developments, relates to common standards which would allow for the interoperability[29] of sectorial systems and machine readable information services. This would further enhance the possibilities for these authorities to have access to all the information necessary for their operative work, with the indirect effect that these authorities would be able to increase their performance and efficiency in carrying out their operative tasks.[30] This goes beyond exchange of raw data (e.g. ship positions) into the further development of Information services (e.g. situational maritime picture, intelligence reports, list of suspicious vessels, risk analysis, anomalies detection, extended info on major accidents, response capacities, collaborative tools) across sectors and borders easing the tasks of national surveillance authorities in their daily duties.

The collection and exchange of maritime surveillance information (such as marine environment related information, maritime activity and event related information and security related information) by maritime surveillance authorities have historically been organised to take place within specific maritime surveillance sectors referred to above[31], including across borders. The information exchange within these sectors is in general terms well developed and functions well, often supported by dedicated information exchange systems at European level[32] or sometimes at regional level.

Further information on these information exchange systems are found in section 4.4. In general terms, the information exchanged through these systems can vary from one system to the next and depends on the specific control needs of each sectorial function. Such information can for example refer to ship position, composition of cargo, characteristics of vessels crew information, catch composition, storage information, disaster alert information and many more. Preparatory actions have indicated that maritime surveillance authorities across Europe are currently collecting around 500 different data sets, of which some follow from legal obligations and others are simply collected at national level to cover their specific needs.

These systems were originally constructed to enable information exchange first and foremost within single sectors, but did often not foresee information exchange with other sectors.

This picture is now gradually changing and more and more sectors are starting to share information with each other. However, as of today and as confirmed by the stakeholder consultation (see section 4.4), not all sectors involved in maritime surveillance activities have provided for the sharing of such information services to the other sectors/functions. A particular area where information exchange remains suboptimal is the exchange between civilian and military authorities. For example, Preparatory actions and interviews with stakeholders have indicated that military authorities often detect irregularities that concern civilian functions, but are often prevented from transmitting that information. This is often because the data is "over-classified" compared to how similar data is treated by civilian authorities.

In addition, the current information exchange systems do not cover all information which could be of interest to share. This means that national authorities need to find alternative ways to exchange part of the information they need to exchange in accordance with data protection requirements. Without adequate overarching IT solutions in place to interconnect the various existing sectorial interoperability solutions, like the requirement to submit defined information through the national single windows, Eurosur’s National Competent Authorities, Marsur, Flux, Siena, and other systems or platforms, authorities risk to continuously be underperforming as still faced with an incoherent and incompatible patchwork of solutions, preventing automatic sharing of information services.

Member States have through surveys expressed the view that limitations to information exchange are experienced both from the perspective of the receiving and providing end user. The following figures illustrate the extent to which the different sectors are experiencing limitations in terms of exchange of information from other sectors, within Member States. The black line in the depicted bars is calculated as each sector’s average limitation value in terms of access from all other sectors, across all Member States. The position of the bar indicates the minimum and the maximum data limitation that the sector experiences from another sector (in averages across Member States).

Note: 0: never; 1: rarely; 2: occasionally; 3: often

Figure 1- Limitations in access to information (source: Member States survey)

The experienced limitations are generally larger when looking at data exchange between Member States.

The problem statement can be illustrated by the following practical examples from the preparatory actions and stakeholder consultations:

Maritime surveillance authorities claim that they have suboptimal access to the maritime surveillance information needed e.g. for the optimum planning of their routine operations and for their various interventions at sea. Some of the information relevant for this planning is not easily accessible or not accessible at all due to real or perceived legal limitations or technical or cultural barriers, depending on each Member State. Information needed for these tasks are typically: (1) Internal surveillance capacities (patrol vessels, aircrafts, including relevant capacities of other partner authorities within a given sea area), (2) historical information about maritime activities in that particular period of the year (organized by own entity or other entity), (3) respective planning of partner authorities (e.g. navy, police), if available, (4) programmed services offered by EU agencies (e.g. satellite images), stand-by antipollution vessels or possible deployment of means at sea (either directly or e.g. through the national maritime surveillance centres) (6) info about tides and extreme weather forecasts, (7) navigational warnings, military exercises, other restricted areas, (8) possible risk assessments carried out by other national authorities or EU agencies, (9) list of suspicious vessels.

In addition, coordinated information services from neighbouring countries may be needed, in order to avoid overlapping activities. Co-ordinated patrol activities near the border and coordinated risk assessments which might affect the own area of responsibility are of particular interest as well routine access to coastal radar or visual imagery from those countries, and planned satellite image service.

Another example is a pleasure boat approaching the European continent from the Atlantic Ocean can potentially be smuggling drugs or arms or be in violation of any other rules of the seven maritime surveillance sectors. It may enter the EU at any place along its coastline from the Gulf of Finland to the Black Sea. Customs and other maritime control authorities along these coasts may be in a difficult position to detect violations unless receiving appropriate information from partner authorities in other sectors as to the suspicion of any nature of the violation, the name of the ship, its destination and its time of arrival.

4.2. What is causing this problem?

The problem is driven by a number of specific causes. The most important specific causes are the following:

Cause 1: Real or perceived legal limitations and legal uncertainty to information exchange between the relevant maritime surveillance sectors

As mentioned above, the different sector policies dealing with maritime surveillance have been developed relatively independently from each other in accordance with the division of competence between authorities at national and EU level. The result has been a lack of synergies between sectors/functions in general and in particular, this approach has not allowed for or created channels for information exchange between them. Instead, sector legislation at national and EU level has often been drafted in such a way that information exchange with other sectors either is not promoted or in some cases not even allowed.

Although the picture is now gradually changing and more and more sectors are starting to share their information collected with other sectors, the current EU regulatory framework has still very variant approaches to information sharing from being direct obligations to share certain data with other sectors to directed prohibitions to do so. There are mainly four categories of real or perceived limitations to information sharing between sectors: 1) direct legal limitations for sharing of information with other sectors 2) provisions exempting specific functions of data sets from any sharing arrangement, 3) legislative acts being silent on the issue (interpreted as meaning that sharing with other sectors is not possible), and 4) provisions which open for sharing with other sectors but not in a mandatory form.

These categories can be illustrated by the following example:

An article 12 was introduced in the fisheries control Regulation of 2009[33], stipulating that certain defined control data (VMS, AIS and VDS data[34]) collected within the field of fisheries "may be transmitted to Community agencies and competent authorities of the Member States engaged in surveillance operations for the purpose of maritime safety and security, border control, protection of the marine environment and general law enforcement".

On the one hand, this Article ensures the sharing of the identified data to other functions and provides for a legal basis of such sharing (to address categories 1 and 3), but on the other hand limits the sharing to certain data and only on a voluntary basis (which might not address categories 2 and 4).

It can be noted at the same time that the conditions for exchanging data with other sectors depend on the nature of the data. Non sensitive data can always be shared more easily with other sectors than sensitive data (most often personal data or commercial data), for which the conditions for access always have to be coupled with the need to know principle referred to above. If the sharing of information involves the processing of personal data, the EU law on protection of personal data[35] and the national legislation implementing this EU law are applicable. This means in practice that perceived legal limitations (such as the limitation in the above Article 12 to limit the distribution of data to certain data sets) in fact are justified. Moreover it has to be noted that the exchange of personal data has to comply with fundamental rights, including the protection of personal data. This is of essential importance with regard to the necessity of data processing in the light of data protection principles such as the 'purpose limitation' for processing operations.

Another challenge is to determine if the limitation is found at EU level or national level. A limitation which is perceived as an EU level issue can in fact primarily be a national matter. This can be illustrated by the following example from preparatory actions:

A national surveillance aircraft operating under the border control scheme of Frontex detects and illegal transhipment activity between a fishing vessel and a cargo vessel. In some cases, the national inspector operating under the Frontex regime has considered that he/she is neither allowed to intervene nor report this incident to fisheries authorities. If the fisheries authorities nevertheless are alerted by phone, fisheries authorities will have to send out a separate plane to record the incident and conduct an inspection, to an extra flight cost of several thousands of euros per hour.

This problem can be perceived as an EU level problem since the inspector is operating under the Frontex regime, but is in fact likely to be a national problem since there are no Frontex rules which prevent the national inspectors from intervening on other matters than border control. The limitation lies instead with how the mandate of the inspector has been formulated at national level. In such a case, the limitation is more of a cultural limitation and not an issue that can be dealt with through legal action at EU level.

A screening of EU legislation made under this impact assessment has shown that most or all direct legal limitations to information exchange have already been removed or are in the process of being removed and that a necessary legal basis for information exchange is being put in place (such as Article 12 of the Fisheries control Regulation). Legal limitations therefore mainly refer to national legislation as shown in the above Frontex example.

Cause 2: absence of an appropriate IT environment which ensures the interconnectivity of existing and future systems.

The seven sectoral functions carrying out maritime surveillance activities are making extensive use of IT solutions to support their activities. 72 systems have been identified through the Member States survey referred to in section 3. These IT solutions have however been developed independently from each other, with a data collection programme tailored only for each sectorial function. In other words, these information systems lack interoperability and the missing link is a common communication tool and a data model. If one compares with the Internet, this tool is the Http protocol. The lack of homogeneity between the IT systems means that information exchange between them becomes compromised, with the effect that maritime surveillance activities become less efficient. This was confirmed by both the Member States survey and the public consultation.

In fact, the lack of a European wide infrastructure interconnecting maritime surveillance authorities based on common standards led to the creation of specific and different solutions ensuring the information exchange within each sectorial function. This means that within most sectoral functions, EU-wide systems are already in place, and are supporting day-to-day activities, as a complement to national IT solutions.

For example, the Maritime Safety and Security community facilitates cross-border exchange between Member States with the "SafeSeaNet"[36] solution and the "National Single Window"[37] (the maritime "National Single Window" is currently defining an information exchange platform to facilitate port reporting formalities for ships and information exchange between relevant authorities belonging to maritime safety and security, customs, border control and health communities within a Member State and between Member states); also a study as regards the “SafeSeaNet evolution” including a “National Single Window demonstrator” is ongoing by EMSA but preliminary and meant to be submitted to TAG once sufficiently advanced; the Border Control community with the" European border surveillance system" (EUROSUR)[38]; the Customs community with the "Common Communication Network and Common System Interface" (CCN/CSI)[39]; the Defence community with the "Maritime Surveillance" network (MARSUR); the Marine Environment community with the "Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community" (INSPIRE)[40] and the "Shared Environmental Information System" (SEIS)[41]; the Law Enforcement community with the "Secure Information Exchange Network Application" (SIENA); the Fisheries Control community with the "Data Exchange Highway" and its "Fisheries Language for Universal eXchange" (FLUX). Beside this variety of IT solutions at national, regional or European level, the total number of stakeholders (more than 400 public authorities across the EU/EEA, IT providers, shipping industry…) makes the situation even more complex when it comes down to exchanging information between their IT solutions. All the systems at national level (72 reported from the survey – see above) have been designed without ensuring their interoperability, i.e. there are 72 different ways of describing and modelling similar information. At EU level, the interconnection solutions described above have also to a great extent been put in place without ensuring their interoperability. This means that different way of describing and modelling similar information has been created in each system (e.g. a vessel is described differently in each of these EU interconnection solutions).

Until now, interconnecting these IT solutions –whenever envisaged- has mainly been done by establishing specific interfaces. But such way of “stitching it together” does not work if cooperation is envisaged at a larger scale cross sector. It is to be noted that the Port Reporting Formalities Directive introduces a better interoperability approach and requires the development of "National Single Window" in each Member State compliant with common specifications for information exchange. However the "National Single Windows" do not cover all the functions relevant for maritime surveillance. They will provide Member States with maritime transport related information. They will not allow for information exchange between for example a border control authority in one Member State and a navy or fisheries authority in another Member State. The problem at hand is the "lack of semantic and technical interoperability between IT solutions used to support maritime surveillance activities":

· Semantic interoperability is jeopardised by different interpretations of the information exchanged between administrations, people, and applications. The lack of a consistent format for the electronic exchanges increases the complexity of the interconnection of the IT solutions (or analysis by humans).

· Technical interoperability is jeopardised by the variety of IT solutions and technologies and the absence of agreement on how to automate information exchanges in a uniform and consistent way.

Such lack of interoperability is the result to sub-optimal cross-sector cooperation. Further cooperation on the definition of common standards to improve interoperability is therefore necessary.

A practical real example of what the consequences of this lack of interoperability could be is the following: A maritime surveillance authority in Member State A would like to share information with an authority in Member State B. It generates a document (e.g. a Word document) then sends the document as an attachment to an email. The receiver then prints the document and re-encodes it manually into its own maritime surveillance system. The result is that the message is not being timely processed, that there could be encoding errors and that this work would take time at the expense of the execution of the core maritime surveillance activities. In a digital world, all these steps can occur electronically and automatically.[42]

The European Commission is currently implementing an overall strategy to rationalise and streamline the IT systems it develops, maintains and operates, including systems supporting EU policies and the information exchanges between European Public Administrations (at European and national level)[43]. The rationalisation initiative of the "trans-European systems between administrations" might lead to the convergence of existing solutions (or some of them) to a common architecture, to a common infrastructure and to building blocks offered to interconnect public authorities. Given the fact that the convergence of the solutions in place will take a long time, it is imperative that the problem of interoperability in maritime surveillance gets addressed today.

Cause 3: Cultural and administrative barriers

This cause refers to the organisational structures of administrations and the behaviours and mentality of individual officials. Discussions so far around the CISE project have shown[44] that there has been a tradition to keep surveillance information within functions and that the willingness to exchange information (“dare to share principle”) between functions has been relatively limited. There are substantial variances between Member States on the willingness to share information, although more difficulties seem to occur in Member States with high hierarchical organisational structures.

This lack of willingness to exchange information with other functions is often the result of a lack of trust and confidence and a lack of common cultural knowledge and understanding of the operational aspects of other sectors. Another explanation often referred to is that inspectors in some countries do not feel that they can share the information in the absence of an explicit legal basis. Other factors include different interpretations of terms and concepts used as well ignorance of organisational structures, working methods and political cultures of the partners. The fact that maritime surveillance activities have been organised sector by sector in a rather isolated way has contributed to this cultural distrust.

4.3. Who is affected by the problems and what are the consequences for them?

The number of authorities dealing with maritime surveillance information in any form has been estimated to be around 400 (see list of authorities in Annex 3). These are essentially EU and EEA Member State authorities, but include also a number of EU Agencies (concerning the relevant EU agencies, see further section 4.5.2 below). This does not include research bodies which might need maritime surveillance data for scientific purposes, such as fish stock assessments or assessments of the state of the marine environment.

Further, all economic actors and citizens in the EU/EEA are indirectly affected by this suboptimal situation as any threat to EU/EEA either at sea (in Member States' waters or in any international waters of EU interest) or entering EU/EEA territory by sea may affect these actors' security, economic, social and environmental interests.

The direct result of this suboptimal situation for these authorities is that they often have an incomplete overview of the maritime awareness situation in the area in or for the activities for which they are responsible.

Incomplete maritime domain awareness can have, inter alia, the direct following operational consequences:

1. Authorities remain unaware or incompletely aware of threats under their responsibility despite that information that would be relevant for their operative activities is available in other sectors. Their maritime domain awareness is sub-optimal.

2. Threats may not be detected, checked and thwarted in time despite that relevant information is available in other sectors.

3. Limited response capabilities and cost-savings in the use of assets leading to parallel, uncoordinated and less efficient deployment activities which can have negative spill over effects for the surveillance of other sea areas or other duties (e.g.: an hour flight of a surveillance aircraft costs several thousands of euros).

Concretely, the negative consequences for these authorities are less efficient surveillance outcomes i.e. less success rate in detecting, checking and thwarting on risks/events such as: death toll at sea; illegal immigration; arms and drugs smuggling; illegal, unreported and unregulated fisheries; sea borne pollution; piracy attacks, etc. In other words, it means that surveillance activities risk being response oriented instead of being anticipative or predictive. A concrete example where surveillance activities need to become more anticipative is the influx of irregular immigrants through the Mediterranean. Early information e.g. from navies or any other sector of the whereabouts of vessels carrying irregular immigrants could for example have helped preventing tragic events like the tragic events near the island of Lampedusa in late 2013 when many hundred irregular immigrants lost their lives.

In addition, suboptimal exchange of surveillance information between the relevant authorities can have the following administrative consequences:

1. Duplication of work and costs: several authorities collect the same data as other services in support of their activities.

2. Excessive administrative cost (e.g. manual encoding in systems) and reduced cost efficiency leading to resource shortages on other tasks. This includes cost of operating several different IT solutions for the different sectorial functions for the same purpose of information sharing.

4.4. The baseline scenario

The Technical Advisory Group referred to in section 3 has in 2011 elaborated a gap analysis covering about five hundred generic data elements relevant to maritime surveillance[45].

The purpose of this very extensive exercise was to make an inventory of the different data sets which is being collected by the different sectorial functions at national level in order to 1) identify duplication in data collection efforts, 2) to verify which information is already being exchanged with other sectorial functions and 3) if there was a demand[46] from the other 6 sectorial functions to receive such information which was not yet exchanged. The inventory contained a list of the most relevant generic maritime surveillance data sets which could be relevant for information exchange across sectors and borders in the EU/EEA.

The result of this gap analysis was that there is a potential gap of between 40% and 90% between supply and demand for additional data exchange between the sectorial functions depending on the area and that 45% of currently collected information is collected by more than one sectorial function, and that about 80% of the existing information is in national ownership. Moreover, almost half of the information that is gathered is owned by two sectoral functions, namely defence and maritime safety, security and prevention of pollution by ships.

The frequency of these information supplies/demands varies as some information might not be needed on a regular basis.

Bottom (dark red): data presently owned by the sectoral function.

Lower centre (light yellow): data presently received from other sectoral functions.

Upper centre (yellow): data presented partially received from other sectoral functions; but there is still a need to improve the completeness of the collection of this data.

Top (blue): data not exchanged at present but requested from other sectoral functions.

Figure 2 - Overview of data gap assessment (source: TAG work)

As explained above, there have been some further developments since this gap analysis was made in 2011. In particular, one can note the adoption of the ship reporting formalities Directive (referred to above) for maritime transport - which will put in place "National Single Windows" in Member States by 1 June 2015 - is expected to reduce the gap identified for this sector as well for the maritime safety and security, customs, border control and health sectors to some extent by introducing the sharing of all ship related regulatory information for vessels above 300 gross tonnes between national authorities and exchange between Member States. A very preliminary assessment made by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission has concluded that this new system will reduce the said gap from a range of 40%-90% range to a range of 30%-85%[47]. Further, as regards the particular gap related to customs, the result remains uncertain since the assessment of the data supply and the data demand was not complete and made with different premises.[48]

There are also other sectorial EU-wide systems and platforms for information sharing that have been put in place, and many are highly functional and successful. Some have started to look at the opportunity for including other sectoral functions but there is no EU wide approach to this.

4.4.1. Evolution of the baseline scenario

Efforts to ensure enhanced cross sector information exchange between maritime surveillance authorities has already been going on for some time, but has accelerated with the development of the Integrated Maritime Policy of the EU, where exchange of maritime surveillance information was considered a priority issue.

In fact, the efforts to bring together technical maritime surveillance experts from different sector policies, inter alia through the creation of a Member State Expert sub-Group and a Technical Advisory Group[49], pilot projects and the publication of two Communications from the Commission[50], have increased interest in information exchange between sectors and helped increase confidence building to work closer together.

Consultations with Member States through focus groups have shown that individual Member States have started to move away from the traditional silo thinking when treating maritime surveillance information at national level. Many Member States are instead taking steps to enhance information exchange between sectors, and some have already put in place, or are planning to do so, national coordination centres and common information sharing environments (e.g. Finland, United Kingdom and Portugal). The willingness to share information across sectors has been increased, but some hurdles are still encountered. These particularly concern unrecognised information needs of other sectoral functions; lack of common definitions and standards as well as lack of trust between the sectoral functions.

At EU level, pilot projects and requests from different entities such as EUNAVFOR, FRONTEX, EFCA, EUROPOL or Bonn Agreement on pollution control in the North Sea[51] as well development of other EU initiatives[52] has contributed to increased co-operation.

Furthermore, two directives the Directive 2002/59/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 June 2002 establishing a Community vessel traffic monitoring and information system and the Directive 2010/65/EU on Reporting formalities for ships arriving in and/or departing from ports of the Member States, are particularly significant in the context of maritime awareness as those facilitate the collection, sharing and exchange of information on all ships above 300 gross tons[53] (except military) on their identification, movement, status (crew and passenger health, ship safety, ship security and environment related),cargo, crew and passengers between authorities. Directive 2002/59/EC is currently under review in order to assess the Union maritime information and exchange system "SafeSeaNet" and how it can be enhanced and further used for the intended purposes of safety, security, pollution prevention and maritime transport as well as maritime traffic and trade, already involving various sectorial functions depending on the national organisational structure. At the same time, EMSA is developing the "Integrated Maritime Data Environment"[54] as a technical framework that collects and combines data from EMSA’s maritime applications to provide integrated maritime services and a more complete maritime awareness picture, tailormade in accordance with the demands of various sectoral functions.

As required by Directive 2010/65/EC, the Member States are currently implementing "National Single Windows" for ship reporting formalities. Information will be reported electronically and only once by the ships. These "National Single Windows" will be linking "SafeSeaNet", e-Customs and other electronic systems. Vessel related information will be made available to relevant authorities (maritime security and safety, customs, border control, and health) within a Member State and between Member States. These "National Single Windows" will be fully operational from 1 June 2015.

Accordingly, Service Level Agreements have been established between EMSA and FRONTEX, EMSA and EFCA, and EFCA and FRONTEX to support them respectively in enhancing their knowledge of the maritime domain awareness. These agreements cover a number of areas for mutual cooperation, such as the integration of various control data such as satellite AIS, radar images position reports from the VMS and AIS systems. These data are combined through joint nautical charts[55].

However, although improving the situation, it is not expected that these developments, in the absence of an interoperability framework between existing systems with common standards for machine readable exchange of information services, will be capable to fully meet new challenges and address the problems identified in this section effectively. The result would be that increased threats and risks would not be dealt with in the most effective manner, that potential conflicts between central EU policy objectives would persist and that duplication of data collection efforts will continue to exist. These developments, already required by EU law in some cases, do however constitute important building blocks and will be the point of departure for the construction of such an interoperability framework.

As regards the evolution of IT technologies, there are two main drivers for the evolution of IT systems[56]: supply-side drivers (technology development or technology retirement) and demand-side drivers (new business functionalities). Given the projections of increased risks and threats in the coming years[57], this suggests that there is a growing need for new business functionalities and therefore a need to invest in IT systems to support better operations. The initial investment cost in an IT system on average is 8% of the lifecycle cost of that IT system and that the lifecycle of an IT system is typically 15 years[58]. The Member States survey shows that the average age of national IT systems supporting maritime surveillance activities is 8.7 years, which also suggests that several IT systems will have to be replaced in the future.

However, the evolution of IT systems is impossible to foresee and the baseline assessment shall only take into consideration current, planned or highly expected evolution scenarios. One needs also to take into account that in a situation of financial crisis, several Member States might not be in a position to make the necessary investments to meet these new IT demands. If the IT requirements cannot be met, the effectiveness and cost efficiency potential offered by CISE cannot be reaped.

In addition, the IT technologies and standards used in the Member States risk evolving in an incoherent way. This suggests that the administrative burden of putting in place additional information exchanges and building new IT functionalities will be high and not cost-efficient. This has already happened in the recent past with several interconnection solutions put in place by the EU (EUROSUR, National Single Window), where the interoperability concerns have not been addressed in a sufficient manner. The administrative burden imposed to the Member States can be considered as unnecessarily high, since different IT solutions are developed by different sectors.

4.5. EU right to act, added value, proportionality and subsidiarity

4.5.1. The right to act – treaty basis

If the preferred option of this impact assessment will be to exclude any legislative action as defined in Article 288 of the TFEU and instead adopt a consultative initiative such as a Commission Communication, it is not necessary to define any legal basis for such a policy option.

If however legislative action is considered as a preferred option in this impact assessment, it will not be feasible to incorporate relevant legal provisions of the CISE project into single instrument given that there is no basis in the TFEU for all seven sectoral functions. The defence policy falls outside the TFEU and falls only partially under the TEU while most of it falls under direct national competence. Moreover, some Member States have an opt-out clause for anything that falls under border control and justice co-operation[59].

In addition, measures can only be included in the same instrument when the relevant process for adoption of the legislative instruments at issue is the same, they have the basis in the same Treaty and are of the same nature.

Therefore, the most feasible approach for legislative action seems to be to elaborate a legislative package containing instruments based on the respective Articles of the Treaty the subject matter fall under and in accordance with the procedures and under the conditions envisaged.

It is worth noting also that the CISE project is developed under the Integrated Maritime Policy of the EU. Legislative initiatives so far developed under this policy have been proposed with a multiple legal basis, representing those sector policies which affect our coasts, seas and oceans. It is settled case law that when a measure simultaneously pursues a number of objectives or has several components that are indissolubly linked, without one being secondary or indirect in relation to the other, such an act will have to be founded on the various legal basis.

A multiple legal basis instrument can in this specific case come into play when measures referring to 2 or several sectors "fall in the same basket" i.e. refer to the same Treaty, are of the same nature (Regulation or Directive) and follow the same legislative procedure for adoption.

4.5.2. Added value of EU action

The added value of EU action has been widely recognised already in stakeholder consultations in other various events and consultations referred to in Section 3.

Information exchange between maritime surveillance authorities are to a large extent of a transnational nature since it normally entails co-operation first and foremost at regional or sea basin level.

Moreover, rules and conditions for transnational sharing maritime surveillance information mainly between authorities of a same sector are already regulated at EU level; which means that amendments of the regulatory framework and the possible removal of legal limitations in accordance with data protection requirements will have to take place at the same level.

In addition, a number of EU Agencies are involved in maritime surveillance activities and are therefore a part of the already existing information exchange at sector level. Several EU agencies and similar bodies are directly relevant for the CISE project, such as EMSA, EFCA, FRONTEX, EDA and EEA.

The process therefore requires an overall EU and EEA wide direction, an overall management of diversity in order to ensure that information exchanges are efficient and beneficial for all maritime surveillance authorities across Europe, independently where threats might occur.

Without targeted action at EU-level it is not likely that transnational issues can be resolved and co-operation ensured in an efficient manner.

4.5.3. Subsidiarity and Proportionality

The principle of subsidiarity is very relevant in this case. Prior consultations with Member States have concluded that, although targeted EU action is necessary to ensure the interoperability of the current system, the operational aspects of any future common information sharing environment needs to be decentralised. This is due to the fact that the operational information exchange most often takes place between national authorities, although some interaction also occurs with EU agencies when they handle maritime surveillance information based on EU sectorial Regulations.

The role of the EU should therefore essentially be to act as a facilitator, to ensure coherence and common standards and to review and revise relevant EU level legislation when necessary.

In conclusion, it is not intended that the CISE project will interfere with the organisational or operational aspects of maritime surveillance related information exchange activities at national level to a larger extent than today. The focus of this work on this policy initiative will be on the EU level. Member State authorities can however make use, as they see fit, of the solutions that can be achieved at EU level.

As regards proportionality, EU action to develop a common information sharing environment will not go beyond what is necessary to achieve the objectives. Measures need to be developed with the right level of detail without micromanaging the process.

Measures should not go into more detail than what is the case for the current information sharing mechanisms within sectors.

4.5.4. Coherence with existing policies and initiatives

The CISE project is intended to be built on current achievements and the existing mechanisms for information sharing which have already been developed at sector level. The purpose will be to ensure the interoperability of sector systems without reinventing any wheels but to streamline over time and reduce administrative burden. This is to realise the full potential of existing resources primarily in terms of sectorial policy achievements, but also better cross sectorial knowledge of occurrences in particular sea basins and to create new business opportunities.

Furthermore, the project is fully in line with a number of other EU wide initiatives such as, the Blue Growth initiative[60], the Marine Strategy Framework Directive[61], the proposal for a Directive on maritime spatial planning and integrated coastal management[62], the EU Maritime Transport Strategy 2018[63] including the Community vessel traffic monitoring and information system Directive[64] and the reporting formalities for ships arriving in and/or departing from ports of the Member States Directive[65] as well as the EUROSUR Regulation[66] and customs legislation[67].

The CISE project also operates within a larger framework of EU-level policies and strategies on eGovernment that have been developed in recent years (see Annex 4):

· The Malmö and Granada Declarations[68] on eGovernment, encouraging the development of more efficient interoperable public services and the European eGovernment Action plan 2011-2015[69].

· The Digital Agenda for Europe (one of the flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 Strategy) where seamless cross-domain and cross-border information exchanges are a priority for the EU. The CISE initiative facilitates Pillar I - Digital Single Market, Pillar II - improving standard-setting procedures and increased interoperability and Pillar VII - IT-enabled benefits for EU society.

· The strategy of the European Commission to rationalise and streamline the IT systems it develops, maintains and operates.

· The ISA Programme[70] aiming at fostering interoperability between public administrations. The CISE project has been funded as relevant action in the Trusted Information Exchange area.

In addition it is part of the recent Action Plan to increase the competitiveness of the EU Security and Defence sector[71]+68. It will be also part of cross-sectorial cooperation areas to implement the future European Union Maritime Security Strategy[72].

Last but not least, the CISE initiative is in line with the European Interoperability Framework (EIF)[73], which is promoting and supporting the delivery of European public services by fostering cross-border and cross-sectorial interoperability. It defines four levels of interoperability, which deserve special attention when a new European public service is established. These levels are described as follows:

Figure 3 - European Interoperability Framework (source: Commission)

5. Objectives

5.1. General objectives

The general objective of this policy initiative is to ensure that maritime surveillance information and services collected by one maritime sector and considered necessary useful for the activities of other maritime sectors can be efficiently shared with those sectors.

The point of departure should be the current achievements and already existing standards for information exchange and work should focus on ensuring the interoperability of information exchanges regulated at EU level, with a particular view to provide Member States with interoperability solutions that they may apply at national level. A particular objective would be to enhance information exchange between civilian and military authorities.

Enhanced information exchange between sectors is expected to contribute to a better overview of the maritime domain awareness for the maritime surveillance authorities at national and EU level and enhanced consistency between sector policies in line with the Integrated Maritime Policy of the EU and facilitate "smarter surveillance" by more anticipative and predictive activities.

The foreseen exchange of information between sectors will have to respect the same rules and principles as for data exchanges within sectors, in particular the relevant provisions of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights[74], the EU legal framework on the protection of personal data, and the national legislation implementing this EU law, as well as the relevant provisions for the protection of commercially sensitive data.

Personal data can only be exchanged if the processing is legitimate[75] and if certain principles relating to data quality are respected[76]. As the purpose of CISE would be to enhance the sharing of information between maritime authorities, it is of particular importance to ensure that strict safeguards are in place whenever personal data are transferred. Therefore, information which contains personal data may only be exchanged for very specific purposes. Also the principle of data minimisation[77] has to be respected, which means that only that personal data will be exchanged which will really need to be exchanged to achieve the defined objectives.

Commercially sensitive data can only be exchanged if the processing does not undermine the economic interest or competition position of the owner of the information.[78]

No free flow of information between sectors is thus envisaged.

Within the field of fisheries, personal data could for example be data on fishing vessels which directly or indirectly identifies the characteristics about the crew. Commercially sensitive data could for example be the exact position reports of fishing vessels which identifies attractive fishing grounds.

Indirectly, a Common Information Sharing Environment is very likely to trigger enhanced cooperation[79] between maritime surveillance authorities leading to increased operational efficiency and cost effectiveness, for example by eliminating duplications of data collection efforts or by coordinating deployments of assets such as ships, aircrafts and satellites in a given sea area.

Since the objective of this initiative is limited to ensure the interoperability of existing and future maritime surveillance systems, the intention is not to develop any new maritime surveillance system. Nor is it intending to replace existing or planned systems and or to duplicate existing or planned systems. It is not intending either to gather more information through own sensors nor permanently store maritime information. It is not intending either to take over sectorial competences neither at EU nor at national level. It is aiming at facilitating the interconnection of these systems, building on already existing specifications and solutions.

While information stems from mainly public but also private sources, such as in the case of environmental data or weather forecasts, the exchange of information in the context of CISE is essentially meant for public authorities.Aggregated data such as future statistics on maritime occurrences potentially resulting from CISE information may nevertheless become public if deemed appropriate.

This is confirmed by Member States in the surveys, indicating that they see moderate to significant potentials for their surveillance tasks with better information sharing across sectors and across countries, given that their current systems will remain in place.

Figure 4- Benefits in terms of surveillance tasks (source: Member States survey)

5.2. Specific objectives

The first specific objective is to identify and address real or perceived legal limitations between sectors to justified exchange of maritime surveillance information and services Actions may include the development of a model Article to provide for a legal basis to information sharing between sectors. When personal data are exchanged, the requirements of the EU legal framework and relevant national legislation on the protection of personal data have to be respected. This means in practice that data can be exchanged inter alia if it is necessary, proportionate and appropriate to achieve the defined objective.

The second specific objective is to ensure interoperability between relevant IT solutions used by maritime surveillance actors through the use of common standards and specifications. This objective addresses the second cause of the problem identified under section 4.2. It addresses any remaining semantic and technical barriers to information exchange between sectoral functions, hence enabling easier, increased and seamless information sharing among maritime surveillance authorities. The objective will be to ensure that information can be transferred and incorporated into existing IT solutions without any manual data entry. The long term vision is that maritime surveillance IT providers one day implement and test IT solutions EU wide based on commonly agreed international standards[80]. It would mean allowing not only information exchange, but also exchanging knowledge through high value services. The exchange of structured information allows for automatic electronic information processing and data mining (e.g. for automatic anomalies detection).

European standards and standardisation are very effective policy tools for the EU. In particular the Digital Agenda for Europe highlights the importance of IT standards in delivering interoperability between devices, applications, data repositories, services and networks. The common data model ensuring semantic interoperability of information exchanges in maritime surveillance would be standardised with a recognised standardisation body[81]. The public consultation confirms the interest of exploring standards-based interoperability. The formalisation of such common data model for the IT industry would mean a significant reduction in its solutions' development cost in designing, production and sales phases, together with a consistent reduction of the industrial risks of missing return on investments. Introducing such standard would also lead to administrative simplification and reduction of administrative burden throughout the EU/EEA. Moreover the compliance with a unique and widely accepted set of standards at International or European level would raise the probability of acceptance by third countries.

The concrete result in the example referred to in section 4.2 would be that the maritime surveillance authority in Member State A can transmit the relevant information electronically and automatically between the IT systems of the two authorities without any manual intervention. The information would be available immediately for automatic processing or for human analysis by an operator and without any possible encoding errors. In addition, the same information can easily, if there is a justified need, be retransmitted to a connected maritime surveillance authority in Member State C and at low cost.

Standards needed in this respect would include the definition of a common data model (specifying consistent and agreed formats for electronic information exchange) and the definition of messaging protocols for trusted and secure information exchange.

Supporting tools to foster cooperation would also be needed: a register of maritime surveillance authorities in EU/EEA with their contact details, tools for virtual collaboration (e.g. videoconference), and a data dictionary to document and disseminate the agreed common data model.

Special software called 'reference implementation' would be put at the disposal of the Member States authorities to facilitate the interconnections. The principle is very similar to existing solutions, also working in decentralised environments[82]: the MEXS component distributed by the MARSUR to the participating defence authorities, the FLUX component distributed by the Commission to fisheries authorities to exchange i.a. VMS data, the EUROSUR nodes which facilitate the exchange of information between national border control authorities, the National Single Windows making available port reporting formalities to national maritime security and safety, customs, border control and health authorities or the e-TrustEx platform[83] which is available to any interested public authority in Europe for the secure digital exchange of documents.

It is unclear at this stage to what extent these solutions could be reused, as this will depend on the results of the Cooperation Project[84] from which more detailed requirements for CISE will be derived[85]. It is proposed to perform such detailed assessment when the results of the Cooperation Project are available in view of minimising the cost of implementing a reference implementation for CISE by reusing as much as possible from these solutions.

The third specific objective is to build confidence in order to bring maritime surveillance authorities of different sectors together and seek for better co-operation inter alia through joint missions, common operational procedures and training, best practices sharing etc. Experiences of co-operation within sectors and across sectors such as BLUEMASSMED and MARSUNO pilot projects[86]+83 have shown that authorities are more at ease to co-operate and exchange information with each other when officials get to know each other through regular cooperation, etc.

6. Policy options

6.1. Selecting the policy options

A whole spectrum of possible options to ensure an optimum exchange of maritime surveillance information within and between sectors can be envisaged. Here, only those options that, prima facie, a) contribute to the objectives laid out in section 5, b) are legally feasible and c) do not entail disproportional costs for public administration, businesses and citizens, are retained for further analysis in sections 7 and 8.

6.2. Discarded options

- A first option to consider would be to discontinue the current work at EU level, including funding of various pilot and co-operation programmes. Any further action to promote information exchange between different maritime surveillance sectors would be left to national authorities or individual sectors.

This option is immediately discarded as it would ignore the expectations of Member States and stakeholders to pursue action within the field of integrating maritime surveillance, as expressed in various council conclusions and ministerial declarations, and would fall considerably short of achieving the objectives identified in section 5.

- Should regulatory actions be considered, different levels of actions are possible. The most intrusive option would be to dismantle the existing sectorial information exchange systems and build a new system covering all sectors from scratch.

This option is immediately discarded as it would make no use of all efforts and investments made by different sectors during a long period of time to create functioning information exchange mechanism with their respective sectors. These systems have developed through time and are in general carefully crafted to strike a balance between different often conflicting interests. This option would also lead to a disproportionate workload for legislators and involved stakeholders compared to the expected benefits. In actual fact, it would delay the development of a common information sharing environment since all structures and organisational matters for existing structures would have to be renegotiated between interested parties. Such action is therefore very disproportionate compared to the defined objectives and would also disrespect the subsidiarity principle.

Any option which is not built on current achievements and existing sector systems is therefore immediately discarded.

- Another option would have been to seek amendments of horizontal EU legislation in force or in coming which are imposing certain conditions for the transmission of certain related information, such as rules on transparency and the protection of personal or commercial data

Such an option can also be immediately disregarded since the objective of this initiative by no means is to review provisions of that nature. In other words, this initiative should not lead to any amendments to the future personal data protection package. For this reason, no option which would lead to free flow of confidential (personal or commercially sensitive data) information can be retained.

6.3. Retained policy options

The policy options retained for a more in depth analysis can broadly be divided into three different categories:

· No further EU action;

· Voluntary measures; and

· Legally binding measures.

6.3.1. Option 1- No further EU action

No policy Change (baseline scenario)

Until now, no specific legislative initiatives have been taken to implement the CISE project. The Commission has so far issued two Communications to define the aim of the CISE project, identify the guiding principles and steps towards its establishment. Along with various EU funded pilot projects, these initiatives have already contributed to raising the awareness among national maritime surveillance authorities of the importance and necessity to share maritime surveillance information and inspired some initiatives among certain sectors.. For example, as already highlighted above, the implementation of "national single windows", as required by Directive 2010/65/EU, is envisaging sharing of information to other sectors on national and EU level. This is also the case for the fisheries control Regulation[87]+84.

This option would mean that EU interventions continue as before and that no specific instrument is developed at EU level. In substance, EU interventions would focus on facilitating a dialogue between stakeholders through Member State Expert Groups and other similar bodies created with the aim to enhance dialogue and co-operation between sectors.

Another important aspect would be to provide continued funding to various projects. Regulation (EU) n°1255/2011[88]+85 has already provided funding for CISE related projects during 2011-2013. Funding for future projects for the 2014-2020 period are currently under negotiation with the legislative bodies in the Regulation for the future European maritime affaires and fisheries fund (EMFF).

Under this option the future development of the CISE project would to a large extent depend on Member States and sector initiatives to obtain interoperability of the existing maritime surveillance information sharing systems. The role of the EU would be limited to foster dialogue between different stakeholders. No EU interoperability standard would be pursued. This policy option has received very limited support from stakeholders.

6.3.2. Option 2 -Voluntary measures

This option contains various sub-options with a higher ambition level and could provide a more stringent framework compared to the previous option. It could also help co-ordinating efforts between maritime surveillance authorities and sectors. This is the policy option which attracts the most support among stakeholders.

The success of the voluntary measures would still depend on the willingness of the different actors to participate, but may provide responsiveness and flexibility.

This policy option can be divided into the following sub-options:

6.3.2.1. Establishment of a Communication

In substance, the purpose of This Communication would be to take stock of the current situation, review the the 2010 roadmap , assess the added value of enhanced information exchange and the need for further EU action, further clarify the respective roles of the EU and its Member States, identify priority areas for further intervention at EU level and to propose and updated roadmap and provide a roadmap for the next steps..

In particular, the Communication should identify:

· The actions which the Commission considers should be taken to address any legal, technical and cultural limitations to the exchange of information services between maritime surveillance authorities. This with a view to promote a dare to share culture and to provide Member States with the appropriate references to take the necessary aciton at national level.

· The current interoperability solutions, the interoperability convergence to be achieved in the medium term and the EU wide interoperability standards needed in the long term. This with a view to allowing Member States, the European Commission, and where necessary in cooperation with industrial players, to elaborate the most appropriate long term interoperability framework for the EU with the objective of ensuring the interoperability of maritime surveillance systems.

· By which means co-operation between civilian and military authorities can be enhanced.

· Means to strengthen the fundamental rights of citizens by bringing guidance on how information exchange need to be arranged while respecting the EU charter on fundamental rights and data protection rules at national and EU level.

The objective would be to create an opportunity to have a more in depth discussion with the co-legislators and stakeholders on how to implement the CISE project and to have a common understanding on the next steps to take. The objective is not to promote the creation of any new obligations to collect data, but rather to move from a single purpose use to a multipurpose use of already collected data and thus reduce duplication of data collection efforts.

6.3.2.2. Establishment of soft policy initiatives such as a guidance document and best practices

This sub-option consists in developing a guidance document or a handbook for the further development and functioning of CISE. This process should be steered by the Commission and the document should be elaborated in close contact with Member States experts. This document may provide recommendations, guidelines and best practices on information sharing. The purpose would be encouraging increased cooperation among EU Member State authorities on a voluntary basis to address cultural barriers. This document should be developed outside any legislative process in order to ensure the uptake of all relevant stakeholders and to be able to address enhanced information exchange between civilian and military authorities.

In substance, such a document may contain:

· Key definition of the most important concepts;

· Key guiding principles for information sharing including governance and responsibility to share surveillance information with other sectors in line with EU on the protection of personal data;

· Key recommendations on legal, technical and operational matters for information sharing such as:

· Suggestions to Member States' maritime surveillance authorities as how they can go about to exchange information across-borders and across-sectors, including using a common data dictionary and common technical standards allowing for the interoperability of the surveillance systems of different sectors; as well as how to deal with perceived or real legal limitations at national level.

· Administrative practice in a coordinated manner by providing guidelines in order to help Member States and other stakeholders to interpret and apply specific provisions of EU legislation. This may, in turn stimulate changes in national legislation in situations, when it contains provisions which are more stringent in comparison with the legislation on EU level;

· A description of core information services and standardised form for the conclusion of agreements (Memorandums of Understanding and Service Level Agreements) among the Member State maritime surveillance authorities and EU agencies regarding the conditions for information sharing and the use of the data shared; and

· Available or possible IT standards for interoperability, possibly elaborated through a standardisation body as referred to in section 5.2. To do this, the Commission will explore the feasibility of develop common standards through the established processes at EU level, ensuring a strong involvement of Member States through their national standardisation bodies.

6.3.2.3. Establishment of a joint undertaking pursuant to Article 187 of the TFEU

The voluntary approach may be formally founded on a joint undertaking. Such undertaking may provide a framework for further activities, encourage and, when appropriate, assist EU Member States to increase maritime surveillance information sharing among sectoral functions and to achieve a more effective and coordinated information sharing. A joint undertaking is typically established by a Council Regulation. Such Regulation is adopted on a proposal from the Commission and after consulting the European Parliament and the Economic and Social Committee, relying on the legal basis in Article 187 TFEU. In the case of CISE a joint undertaking may foster research on interoperability, on new future-oriented maritime surveillance information services and on civil-military cooperation.

In substance, the objective of this sub-option would be to address the same issues as those referred to in the previous sub-option.

This option would be relevant when a temporary framework for the establishment of the CISE project would be useful and can provide a flexible mechanism for further cooperation.

6.3.3. Option 3 -Binding measures

This policy option seeks to implement the objectives of the CISE project through a legally binding approach. It thus constitutes a further upgrade of the ambition level compared to the previous option. Any such