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Maritime Spatial Planning processes are already being implemented in many parts of the world being Europe one of the hot spots due to the approval of the Directive 2014/89/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 establishing a framework for maritime spatial planning, which oblige every coastal Member State to have approved plans by March 2021. This Directive does not allocate specific funds for the development of these plans but it supports national processes by funding Maritime Spatial Planning transboundary projects among neighbouring countries. These projects have mainly two benefits, one is to provide states with knowledge, capacity and methodologies to apply in MSP national processes, and another one is to facilitate the coherence along plans of neighbouring countries sharing a sea basin region. As biological and ecological processes in the marine environment are not limited by administrative borders, the transboundary component of Maritime Spatial Planning is of extremely importance to manage marine resources in a sustainable way

Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) is gaining importance as a new process for the governance of seas and oceans, as maritime nations exercise greater management over their territorial waters and, in many cases, over exclusive economic zones that span a larger area. The purpose of this planning is to reverse the environmental degradation of the seas and facilitate the sustainable use of marine resources, both for mature uses such as fishing and navigation, and for emergent uses, including renewable energies and mariculture. In Europe, the Directive 2014/89/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 establishing a framework for maritime spatial planning oblige coastal Member States to develop maritime spatial plans at the latest by 31st March 2021. To help in that process, countries have at their disposal a set of existing instruments, including research projects, supporting guidelines, recommendations and sets of tools and data, as the SIMNORAT project, co-funded by the EC – DG Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE). This paper presents best practices developed in this project on technical, scientific, and social aspects of MSP to overcome barriers of MSPD implementation testing effective cooperation on transboundary areas and providing a set of cross-cutting MSP related recommendations to foster collaborative efforts and to improve the overall transboundary dimension of the MSP Directive.

The Mediterranean region is of fundamental importance to Europe given its strategic position. The responsibility for its overall ecosystem integrity is shared by European Union Member States (EU-MS) and other Mediterranean countries. A juxtaposition of overlapping governance instruments occurred recently in the region, with the implementation of both the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) for EU-MS and the Ecosystem Approach Strategy (ECAP) for all Mediterranean countries, including EU-MS. Both MSFD and ECAP are structured around vision-driven processes to achieve Good Environmental Status and a Healthy Environment, respectively. These processes have clear ecosystem-based, integrated policy objectives to guarantee the preservation and integrity of Mediterranean marine ecosystem goods and services. However, adoption of these instruments, especially those related to the new EUMS directives on marine policy, could result in a governance gap in addition to the well-known economic gap between the EU and the non-EU political blocs. We identify two complementary requirements for effective implementation of both MSFD and ECAP that could work together to reduce this gap, to ensure a better alignment between MSFD and ECAP and better planning for stakeholder engagement. These are key issues for the future success of these instruments in a Mediterranean region where discrepancies between societal and ecological objectives may pose a challenge to these processes.

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) adopted in 2008 aims to protect the marine environment through the holistic Ecosystem Approach (EA). The MSFD requires Member States to develop and implement cost-effective measures to achieve and/or maintain “Good Environmental Status” (GEnS). To this end, interested parties require a large amount of data and this data should be appropriately managed. This is particularly true for EA applications, where data can come from diverse sources, in diverse formats, and from several disciplines. Preliminary steps for supporting reliable multi-disciplinary analysis include data collection, data management, and the implementation of an interoperable sharing system. In an effort to implement this type of multidisciplinary analysis, a working group from the KnowSeas project (www.knowseas.com) created a Spatial Data Infrastructure for the Mediterranean Sea, designed to define and analyze the GEnS concept across various geographical scales. This article describes the implementation of this SDI, demonstrating how an interoperable system can provide strong support in implementing the MSFD under the EA, and how marine spatial planning can assist policymakers in the decision making process.