Supplementary information to the Article 8 assessment guidance
The assessment of the sea-floor and benthic habitats of Europe’s seas is a requirement of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) under the qualitative descriptor 6 (“Sea-floor integrity is at a level that ensures that the structure and functions of the ecosystems are safeguarded and benthic ecosystems, in particular, are not adversely affected”). Article 8 of the MSFD requires this assessment, while Commission Decision 848/2017 lays down the criteria and methodological standards for such an assessment. The guidance document #19 for the MSFD implementation provides an overview of the assessments under Article 8 for all the qualitative descriptors, while this report aims to give a more elaborated guidance for Descriptor 6, and provide supplementary information, with examples and proposed ways of handling data, using indicators, and agreed thresholds.
The assessment approach for sea-floor and benthic habitats is novel and not yet tested on the pan-European scale. Therefore, this report should be seen as an interim view of the marine benthic experts of the Technical Group on seabed habitats and sea-floor integrity (TG Seabed; the technical group established by the Member States and the European Commission under the MSFD Common Implementation Strategy).
This report provides supplementary information to the Article 8 assessment guidance document (European Commission, 2022) where:
— the physical pressures impacting the sea-floor and benthic habitats are defined,
— human activities causing such pressures are discussed,
— elements to be assessed are identified,
— assessment scales and marine reporting units are proposed,
— inter-relations with other MSFD criteria and other policies are identified and integration with them suggested,
— the agreed threshold values are presented, and
— approaches to address uncertainty are discussed.
In this report, TG Seabed has agreed on the general principles of the assessment of sea-floor and benthic habitats, such as pressure definitions, definition of adverse effects and necessary thresholds indicating good status. With these general principles, the coherence of the Member States assessments under Descriptor 6 will improve, and it is anticipated that many details will likely become clearer once good practices have accumulated from the upcoming assessments.
This report has been updated to integrate the latest developments under TG Seabed until December 2023, and thus includes references to the D6C4 and D6C5 threshold values proposed by TG Seabed and adopted by MSCG on 15 March 2023 and endorsed by Marine Directors on 4 June 2023.
RAICEVICH Saša;
KORPINEN Samuli;
SCHROEDER Alexander;
WIJNHOVEN Sander;
DINESEN Grete Elisabeth;
PAPADOPOULOU Nadia;
HÄUBNER Norbert;
BELIN Alice;
MARKOVIC Laurent;
CANALS Miquel;
CONNOR David;
KRAUSE Jochen;
KREUTLE Axel;
VAN LANCKER Vera;
MULLER Héloïse;
NYSTRÖM SANDMAN Antonia;
PUNZON Antonio;
VAZ Sandrine;
ALONSO ALLER Elisa;
VIGHI Morgana;
2025-06-18
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC142314
978-92-68-28749-1 (online),
OP KJ-01-25-340-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC142314,
10.2760/8315684 (online),
