EU Commissioner Kadis pledges new strategies for islands and coasts

European Fisheries Commissioner Costas Kadis has pledged that the European Union will put forward two new strategies for coastal communities and islands during Cyprus’ six-month term as the holder of the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU.

Speaking to the Sunday Mail, he said the two strategies will complement one another, and that they will be “extremely relevant for Cyprus”.

“Coastal communities hold enormous potential for sustainable development but at the same time they face common challenges, not least from the effects of climate change. For islands like Cyprus, there are additional challenges related to the natural insularity, such as connectivity, energy and waste management,” the Cyprus EU commissioner explained.

As such, he said, the two strategies’ main aim will be “to step up support to EU islands and coastal communities”.

He explained that around 95 million people live on islands or in coastal communities within the EU’s borders, and that the two strategies which are to be put forward will allow those communities to “better seize opportunities and address the challenges they face, including generational renewal and energy transition in the fisheries sector”.

Those new strategies, he said, will be launched in June – Cyprus’ last month as the holder of the Council of the EU’s rotating presidency.

He said the EU also plans to launch an “ocean observation initiative” during the first half of this year.

The aim of that initiative, he said, will be “to lead globally on ocean observation, collecting information and data on the marine environment”.

He added that the information and data collected would then be used for a plethora of different purposes, including but not limited to “research and Innovation, climate and ocean forecasting, early warning systems, defence and civil protection, maritime security, the blue economy, safety at sea, marine conservation and restoration, pollution monitoring, and environmental management”.

He also said the EU intends to complete its evaluation of its common fisheries policy within the next few months, with the results of that evaluation to be presented at an informal ministerial meeting in Cyprus in May.

The results of the evaluation and May’s meeting, he said, will “help us take informed decisions about possible improvements of our policy”.

In addition, he said that one of the most important goals he has is to “advance the implementation of the European ocean pact”.

The European ocean pact was adopted by the commission last year, with the commission saying at the time that it “brings together European Union ocean policies under one single coordinated framework”.

The pact has six priorities: protecting and restoring ocean health; boosting the competitiveness of the EU’s sustainable blue economy; supporting coastal and island communities and outermost regions; enhancing maritime security and defence; advancing ocean research, knowledge, skills, and innovation, and strengthening EU ocean diplomacy and international ocean governance.

Kadis described the pact as “the first ever holistic strategy for the sustainable management and preservation of our ocean”. He said that many of the initiatives set out in the pact will be launched during Cyprus’ six-month term as the holder of the presidency.

He said this will begin with the establishment of a governance framework for the pact.

This framework, he said, will comprise an ocean pact board, charged with monitoring progress in implementation, an ocean pact dashboard which will be publicly accessible and thus allow the public to monitor progress on its implementation, and an ocean pact report, in which results will be published at the end of the year.

He went on to explain that the ocean pact will be brought to fruition with the aid of its regulatory framework, the ocean act, which the commission had earlier said “will help to ensure the implementation of the priorities of the pact”.

The act, he said, will allow the EU “to protect and restore ocean health, and to better coordinate our activities at sea, using the maritime space in the best efficient way”.

He added that to this end, the EU will revise and upgrade its maritime special planning directive, allowing Brussels and member states to better “organise how we use the sea so that different activities coexist harmoniously, and nature is protected”.

Meanwhile, he said, the ocean act will “ensure that the existing protection targets linked to the ocean are identifiable under one roof and will facilitate their coherent and effective implementation”, thus reducing the administrative burden.

He said an impact assessment regarding the ocean act is currently ongoing, with its results expected towards the end of Cyprus’ six-month term.

Asked how Cyprus may help to further the ocean act’s implementation, he said that the commission and the Cypriot government are collaborating to organise an event to celebrate the annual European maritime day in Limassol in May.

This event, as well as others, he said, will allow for stakeholder input in the implementation of the act, with the Limassol event set to bring together “stakeholders from the government, industry, non-governmental organisations, academia, public institutions and interested citizens”.