Coastal Zone Policy

ICZM Recommendation implementation process

A European Parliament and Council Recommendation concerning the implementation of Integrated Coastal Zone Management in Europe was adopted on 30 May 2002. The text of the Recommendation is available here. It outlines steps which the Member States should take to develop national strategies for ICZM, based on common ICZM principles.

To support the implementation of the ICZM Recommendation, the Commission facilitates an expert group, which held its first meeting on 3 October 2002. More information about the Expert group and its meetings can be found here.

The expert group was formed following the first High Level Forum on ICZM, organised by the Spanish Presidency of the EU from April 19 to 21 in Villajoyosa, Spain. The Forum gave a clear message of support to the ICZM Recommendation and implementation of ICZM in Europe.

Forum's Conclusions

The Greek Presidency of the EU organised an International High Level Conference on Coastal areas and cities from May 29 to 30, 2003, in Hersonissos, Crete.

Conclusions

Financial support to implementation

EU financial instruments can support implementation of a large variety of coastal projects and research. For more information on funding opportunities and a few examples of projects that benefit from EU financial support in the financial programming period 2006-2014, please see this overview.

Case-studies and best-practice examples to support ICZM implementation are provided by the OURCOAST database.

The coastal wikipedia gathers coastal management knowledge and research. It is a result of the EU co-funded research project ENCORA.

Evaluation

The EU ICZM Recommendation, Chapter VI.3, requested the European Commission to present an evaluation report to the Council and the European Parliament. This evaluation, and policy directions for the further promotion of ICZM in Europe were presented by the Commission in its Communication of 7 June 2007 (COM(2007)308 final).

The reports by the EU coastal Member States further to the EU ICZM Recommendation were the main source of information used in the evaluation and are available online.

The EEA state-of-the coast assessment of 2006 was another important source for the Communication (Summary Briefing in all languages, the whole report in English).

The Commission ordered an external assessment to prepare for the evaluation. The executive summary is available in English, French and German (pdf ~160K). The full report is available in English only (pdf ~2,9Mb).

Disclaimer: the release of the report by the Commission does not imply recognition either of its regularity or of the authencity, completeness or correctness of the declarations and information enclosed.