Assessment (Art. 8), Good Environmental Status (Art. 9) and Targets (Art. 10)
The current report analyses the information provided by the European Union Member States (MS) on Descriptor 3 (D3) – populations of commercial species - of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). The reported information by the MS follows the Article 17 requirements of the MSFD for updating Articles 8, 9 and 10 of the Directive, for the last 6-year MSFD reporting cycle. By September 2020, 20 MS reported on D3 in electronic format. Concerning Article 8, all reporting MS assessed the primary criterion D3C2 and 19 of them assessed the primary criterion D3C1 for at least a single element (i.e. population of a commercial species). However, only a few MS assessed the primary criterion D3C3. Nevertheless, even the more advanced criteria D3C1 and D3C2 were not assessed for the majority of reported elements indicating a significant knowledge gap. Coverage in terms of reported taxa was adequate for most MS, but improved coverage is needed by some MS, particularly in the western Mediterranean Sea. There was a gradient between MS reporting a low number of elements with most information completed, and MS reporting a large number of elements with most information missing. Additionally, we detected several issues that need to be rectified to achieve comparable assessments across MS, such as the assessment period varying significantly, gaps in reporting threshold values, threshold value sources, reported values and trends, and inconsistent integration rule types. There was also a general lack of consistency in the reporting terminology. With regards to Article 9, only half of the MS provided information on Good Environmental Status (GES) description at the Descriptor level and slightly more reported at the level of criteria. A general lack of harmonization in the GES determination was detected. In most cases, GES was not specified in a quantitative manner or in terms of threshold values. With regards to Article 10, inconsistencies were observed in the way the MS have set their targets, while many of the targets reported were not directly relevant to D3. Targets were largely not harmonised across MS and they were rarely quantitative and/or associated with specific thresholds. The present report provides recommendations for the application of D3 criteria, GES determination and on Article 10 targets.
VASILAKOPOULOS Paraskevas;
KONRAD Christoph;
PALIALEXIS Andreas;
BOSCHETTI Simona;
2021-04-16
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC124746
978-92-76-34175-8 (online),
1831-9424 (online),
EUR 30660 EN,
OP KJ-NA-30660-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC124746,
10.2760/40557 (online),
