Blue Growth

The 2022 edition of the European Maritime Day (EMD) will take place on 19-20 May. Seize this opportunity to bring EMD to your country and organise your own event, with EMD communication materials and coverage support. More details about the EMD2022 agenda, themes and national events are available on the official EMD website. It is open to all Common Maritime Agenda (CMA) countries, and the CMA National Hubs can help you in your submission. In 2021, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine organized dedicated events. Contact us for more information.

Two new EMFAF Calls for Projects have been published for the Black Sea region. These two funding opportunities focus on (1) Innovation Capacity Building Pilots and (2) Maritime Spatial Planning. 1 - Boosting innovation and digitalisation in blue economy sectors. The selected pilot project(s) will contribute to the implementation of the European Green Deal objectives, the Digital Agenda and the EU Communication on Sustainable Blue Economy - Total available budget 1M€ 2 - The objective of this call for proposals is to facilitate the implementation of Maritime Spatial Planning in the EU, including through the effective application of Directive 2014/89 establishing a framework for MSP - Total available budget 3.75M€ for all EU Seabasins.

The Black Sea Common Maritime Agenda community has been especially active over the past few weeks. Alongside the hackathon-fuelled CMA Regional Stakeholders Conference, three national stakeholder events also took place in Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria. Don’t hesitate to explore the exchanges and knowledge shared during these events, as recordings, as well as all the outputs and related content from all four conferences are now available on the CMA website!

Finland's Marine Spatial Plan 2030 is in force and the first planning cycle is coming to an end. A final seminar with the marine partners is being organised in Lumilinna, Kemi, on Friday 3 December 2021 from 8:30 to 14:30.

MedPAN, SPA/RAC, WWF, the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, and their partners, are pleased to announce the 3rd edition of the Forum of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the Mediterranean.

Final Conference of the project MARSPLAN-BS II

2021's Regional Stakeholders Conference for the Common Maritime Agenda for the Black Sea #BlackSeaAgenda2021 took place on 22 November from 14:00 to 17:30 EET. With a high turnout from across the CMA countries, attendees participated in a varied afternoon of interactive and productive discussions. Key to the event were three parallel hackathon sessions, each covering one of the CMA’s headline goals, which saw project concepts presented on topics as varied as marine protected areas networks, green/smart ports pilot initiatives and innovative blue economy business accelerators presented. The conference agenda and all relevant links and documents are available on the dedicated conference website below.

4th Baltic Sea Region Planners’ Forum

The 2021 Regional Stakeholder Conference for the Common Maritime Agenda for the Black Sea will take place on Monday 22 November from 14:00 to 17:30 EET. Registration, conference agenda and all relevant links and documents are available on the dedicated conference website. Join us online for this landmark event, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn with the hashtag #BlackSeaAgenda2021.

Blue Economy Conference at Sealogy® - ‘A new approach for a sustainable Blue Economy’

November 9th was a big day for the western Mediterranean dialogue in the blue economy. On that day the WestMED stakeholder conference in Rome outlined the priorities and next steps of cooperation in aquaculture, green shipping, sustainable tourism, maritime clusters, development of maritime skills and more.

The initial Finnish maritime spatial plan was approved in December 2020 and first planning cycle is coming to an end. A final seminar with the marine partners is being organised in Lumilinna, Kemi, on Friday 3 December 2021

The Offshore Coalition for Energy and Nature (OCEaN) working group on Marine/Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) has recently finalised a document containing five key principles that Member States should integrate into their respective national MSP plans.

WindEurope's annual on- and offshore wind energy event

The Emerging ecosystem-based Maritime Spatial Planning topics in North and Baltic Seas Region (eMSP NBSR) and Advancing Maritime Spatial Planning in Outermost Regions (MSP-OR) projects were awarded under the EMFF-MSP-2020 call for projects. Both projects were officially launched early October 2021.

Slovenia’s MSP was adopted in summer 2021 and recently translated into English. Discover the maps, vision and ongoing work on our website.

The UN Global Compact launched during COP26 the Roadmap to Integrate Clean Offshore Renewable Energy into Climate-smart Marine Spatial Planning together with leaders from the Global Wind Energy Council and IOC-UNESCO.

The “Study on Integrating an Ecosystem-based Approach into Maritime Spatial Planning” was launched by the European Commission and carried out by a team coordinated by Milieu Consulting with ACTeon, the Baltic Environmental Forum and Wageningen University, supported by Fresh Thoughts Consulting and GRID-Arendal. The main objective of the study is to assess the state of play in the practical application of an Ecosystem-based Approach (EBA) in MSP and to develop a practical method and toolbox that can support the application, monitoring and evaluation of EBA in MSP.

The objective of this call for proposals is to facilitate the implementation of Maritime Spatial Planning in the EU, including through the effective application of Directive 2014/89 establishing a framework for MSP.

The H2020 project UNITED is organising a series of multi-use training workshops. This first workshop will focus on "Offshore Platform Operation, Safety and Logistics within the context of multi-use"