C 165/4
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
10.5.2023
2.2.
Links with Article 8 of the Directive (Assessments of state), Article 9 (Determining good environmental status), Article 10 (Environmental targets) and Article 13 (Measures) The analysis showed that most monitoring programmes submitted by Member States were designed to cater for pressures at sea and at source (16).
They were therefore less suitable to measure the impacts of those pressures.
Moreover, the analysis highlighted gaps in Member States’ monitoring programmes.
Most gaps seem to be linked to the lack of agreed approaches or methodological standards at EU or regional level to assess the different criteria or descriptors.
On the coverage of criteria for good environmental status (17), the analysis shows that the monitoring programmes are often incomplete, with wide variations between Member States for each of the descriptors.
That said, monitoring programmes are more complete when the MSFD criteria coincide with requirements under other EU legislation.
This is the case for commercial fisheries (descriptor 3) under the common fisheries policy or for eutrophication (descriptor 5) under the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC).
This confirms the lack of sufficiently concrete and coordinated good environmental status determination, already highlighted in the Commission assessment of Member States reports on Articles 8-10 (18).
In fact, less than 50 % of Member States have set quantitative threshold values for good environmental status and less than 25 % of Member States have established adequate means to determine a good environmental status for descriptors on biological diversity, non-indigenous species, contaminants, and marine litter.
For all descriptors, a significant number of Member States have indicated that monitoring is not yet adequate to cover their own environmental targets.
The latest Commission assessment of Member States targets (19) had already shown that there are still many gaps in the setting of common targets because they are defined in a rather general way.
For instance, only 30 % of Member States set measurable targets for eutrophication and less that 20 % do so for all the other descriptors.
This means that they cannot all be linked to specific monitoring activities.
Therefore, the monitoring programmes cannot address all the targets.
In addition, the monitoring programmes do not provide sufficient data to assess the progress due to measures, despite the recommendation made by the Commission in 2017 (20) and 2018 (21).
Many Member States have declared that monitoring is not yet adequate to cover the progress of measures and to gauge their effectiveness.
To monitor effectiveness, measures must be specific to the descriptor under review and cannot be generic or broadly related to human activity impacts, as is often the case now.
To conclude, from the information reported, it is difficult to accurately assess the links with other MSFD reporting obligations (namely Articles 8, 9, 10 and 13).
It seems there are still gaps in understanding (i) which elements/parameters should be monitored to assess good environmental status; (ii) the conceptual approaches to set targets; and (iii) what should be reported for monitoring related to measures.
The Commission would therefore like to underline that consistent and coherent monitoring will only be possible when targets are specific enough and clearly linked to a particular good environmental status criterion.
Only then, will it support the implementation of Article 10 and measure progress towards the targets.
2.3.
Spatial/temporal scope and monitoring frequency Monitoring efforts mainly focus on coastal waters, suggesting the need for improved monitoring in other underrepresented areas, namely beyond Member States’ territorial waters, which are also covered by the scope of the legislation.
The Commission recognises the challenges and costs that monitoring out at sea entails.
This is why targeted support has been provided through projects financed by EU funds such as the European Maritime Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund (EMFAF) and its predecessor the European Maritime Fisheries Fund (EMFF), regional funding (INTERREG), and Horizon 2020.
The (16) See p.95-118 and 175-177 of the JRC analysis.
(17) As envisaged in Commission Decision 2017/848/EU.
(18) Covering assessment of the marine environment (Article 8), determination of good environmental status (Article 9) and environmental targets (Article 10): C(2022)1392 ‘Commission Notice on recommendations per Member State and region on the 2018 updated reports for Articles 8, 9 and 10 of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (2008/56/EC)’ (19) See footnote 18.
(20) COM (2017) 3 final.
(21) COM (2018) 562 final.