A New Voyage of Discovery: the Development of Integrated Maritime Policy as an Element of EU External Policy
By John B Richardson1
This chapter looks at the development of the EU Integrated Maritime Policy (IMP), its progress so far and the resistance it encounters. It notes that it has not yet been extended as an integral part of the EU’s external policies. It sets out some of the thinking that is being developed to fill this gap, and it suggests how best to take it forward.
The IMP is an attempt to bring about a massive change in the European governance of all policies and activities affecting or taking place on the Oceans.
The usual source of EU initiatives is think tanks, public opinion, the European Parliament, sometimes a Member State. This is not what it says in textbooks. There you will read that it is the Commission that proposes, and indeed ideas do emerge from within the Commission machinery. The IMP is, however, one of those rare examples of an idea which actually came from the Commission President.
President Barroso introduced the Green Paper on maritime policy2, the document which launched the consultation process to develop the new policy, as follows:
“As a Portuguese, it is only natural that maritime issues are close to my heart. That is why the sustainable use and governance of our oceans has been, for a long time, a matter of considerable importance to me. I find it striking, therefore, that while the oceans are an essential element of life-support for our planet, even influencing our climate, they remain relatively unknown. Equally, their importance to our lives is often underestimated.”
We see here the Portuguese origins of an attempt to change the governance paradigm for policy activities dealing with the oceans and all the activities on them.
At the beginning of the Green Paper is placed Arthur C Clarke’s remark, “How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when it is quite clearly Ocean.”
The idea was to encourage a different way of looking at the planet, which placed the ocean at the centre and not at the periphery. And the members of the small Task Force created to develop this idea went out and asked thousands of stakeholders what the result would be if we did so.
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After a long career with the European Commission, mostly in external relations, he headed the Task Force which developed the Integrated Maritime Policy. He is now a Senior Fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
“Towards a future Maritime Policy for the Union” COM/2006/0275 final, 7.6.2006 2
On the Commission website under the Directorate General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE) you can now read the answer, the reasons for an IMP:
“To take account of the inter-connectedness of industries and human activities centred on the sea. Whether the issue is shipping and ports, wind energy, marine research, fishing or
tourism, a decision in one area can affect all the others. For instance, an off-shore wind farm may disrupt shipping, which in turn will affect ports.
To save time and money by encouraging authorities to share data across policy fields and to cooperate rather than working separately on different aspects of the same problem.
To build up close cooperation between decision-makers in the different sectors at all levels of government – national maritime authorities, regional and local authorities, and
international authorities, both inside and outside Europe.”
We can summarize this by saying that an integrated maritime policy is needed because activities on the seas affect each other. Its aim is therefore to get decision makers in the different maritime areas to work together to improve policy to save time and money and achieve better results. This may seem obvious, but it turned out that implementing such an obvious idea was anything but straightforward. This can be illustrated by the problems encountered in the consultations. Among our citizens there was a lack of interest, there was insufficient knowledge, there was what we called sea blindness – the sea looks empty so we think it is empty of life, empty of activity.
Among the economic actors we had to contend with the tradition of the freedom of the seas and we found that each sector had its own mystique, was its own little world.
This was also the biggest problem among government departments. Each sector, each subject was seen as separate. Each maritime Member State had, in varying degrees, its own proud tradition of naval warfare, of fisheries culture, of international shipping, of shipbuilding, of coastguard activity. Each of these professional activities had their own myths, their own clubs, their own training institutions. And government had followed suit by ensuring that they were regulated by separate ministries. This compartmentalization was all the stronger because of the very professionalism of each sector, based on years of accumulated experience and expertise. The same was true within the European Commission, despite the interservice consultation system and despite the principle of the collegiality of Commission decisions, both designed to ensure that all relevant Departments can contribute to a common proposal. There was a real problem to understand that maritime policy was supposed to be a function – a coordination function - rather than a sectoral policy.
To overcome these problems allies were needed and were found among certain Member States; Portugal, Spain, and France in particular, but also Greece and Ireland. It is perhaps not an accident that four of these are Atlantic nations.
The Green Paper with first ideas was published on 7 June 2006. A Green Paper is a consultation document and the Commission usually fixes a consultation period of 3 or 4 months. In the Task Force we were convinced that in order to bring about a paradigm change, explain it, and build up a broad consensus to make it happen, we needed to take a year, we had to get out there and talk to citizens. We organized or participated in over 250 events on the subject during that year and calculated that 25000 people had attended them.
In parallel, of course, we worked with Member State experts and with an interservice group bringing together all those in the Commission whose work was relevant for sea-based activities A steering group of all those Commissioners in charge of policy areas which impacted on the oceans and on maritime activity was set up, covering environment, shipping, tourism,
shipbuilding, fisheries, research, energy, and social affairs. It was ably chaired by the Maltese Commissioner, Joe Borg, who turned out to have not only a keen sense of what he wanted to achieve, but also the necessary people skills to persuade a heterogeneous group of
commissioners to work together, which they proved to do more willingly than some of the Directorates General which served them.
The strategy was successful. The consultation period ended in summer 2007, The Commission published its so-called Blue Book on maritime policy, with its accompanying Action Plan, in October, and the European Council endorsed it in December3.
The Action Plan contained a whole collection of policy actions, many of which would be carried out by DGs other than DG MARE. Some examples, which have led to or are about to lead to formal proposals are:
The Blue Band proposals to reduce the level of red tape for coastal shipping to the same level as for road transport.
A new ports policy
New EU rules on air pollution from shipping.
Applying EU labour legislation in an appropriate way to shipping.
Reform of fisheries policies, in particular to eliminate the practice of discarding fish at sea.
Creation of a cross-cutting marine science agenda.
Development of a strategy for the promotion of maritime tourism.
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But the Blue Book also proposed a number of projects which would be carried out by DG MARE. They were all designed to create a solid base for future development of the policy. And they were all examples of the integration of national and regional elements that had previously existed separately.
The first was the creation of a Europe-wide data base called the European Marine Observation and Data Network, a massive undertaking involving many scientists.
The second was to provide a Road Map for the Member States to systematically introduce Maritime Spatial Planning in their coastal waters. This effort was marked in 2013 by a Commission proposal for a directive, which is currently under discussion in Council and Parliament4.
The third was to bring about the gradual integration of national systems of surveillance of maritime activities. I want to take this as an example to explain some of the politics we had to deal with.
Why is surveillance needed?
Put simply it is needed in order to ensure that rules are respected on the oceans. There are fewer policemen per square km than on land. There exist multiple sources of information on activities on the oceans. Multiple agencies are involved. They only rarely exchange information. So there are obvious synergies and efficiencies possible.
Within the EU around 400 separate public authorities are engaged in maritime surveillance in the fields of transport, border control, fisheries control, law enforcement, customs, environment and defence. Many are national authorities, but there are over 60 independent EU systems, which have been developed in relative isolation from each other. To a large extent they do not share data so the same data is collected multiple times, using expensive assets such as radars, planes, ships, satellites, etc.
To take one flagrant example of the waste which ensues. If a plane flying on behalf of the border agency Frontex detects illegal fishing activities, it is not allowed by law to share its proof of the activities with fisheries authorities. It can alert them but they will then need to send out another plane to obtain their own proof of the illegality (assuming that the illegal fishing has not stopped in the meantime!) The costs of such flights are upwards of €20000 per hour. The potential gains in efficiency and in reduced costs are clearly considerable, if this situation can be improved. Some progress has indeed been made in this direction.
4 “Proposal for a Directive establishing a framework for maritime spatial planning and integrated coastal management” COM (2013) 133 final, 12.3.2013
The Commission began with CISE – the common information sharing environment. Its first step was to demonstrate what can be achieved in practice. BLUMASSMED in the Mediterranean and its Atlantic approaches and MARSUNO in the Baltic and North Sea were pilot programmes designed to do that. They were successful in testing the conditions needed to allow data to be exchanged in real time between multiple national authorities. But progress has been slow since then as EU agencies operating their own surveillance systems, such as EMSA with SafeSeaNet and CleanSeaNet or Frontex with Eurosur, all pushed by their supervising Directorates General ( MOVE, HOME), cling to the status quo and fear that they could lose responsibilities within any broader system.
3 years ago the Member States started their own group to move towards greater cooperation between coastguards in our Member States. (The EU Coastguard Functions Forum). This was chaired for its first two years by the Irish coastguard. The habit of cooperation is developing outside the Commission.
The policy proposals changed the landscape in the Member States in other ways as well. Most Member States have now set up integrated control centres in which surveillance data from different national agencies are brought together. Most have set up some form of inter-ministerial coordination. (Many have also begun with maritime spatial planning, in advance of Commission proposals.)
One of the policy areas for which surveillance is conducted is defence. The Commission Green Paper and subsequent Blue Book and Action Plan made no mention of this because defence falls under the competence of Member States and national security is explicitly excluded from the rules of the Single Market. In terms of extracting maximum benefit from the powerful concept of integrated policy this is clearly an anomaly and maritime surveillance provides a very good illustration of this.
It was therefore good news when the Commission and the External Action Service (EEAS) announced that they would work on joint proposals for an EU maritime security strategy.
Integration of military and civilian policies was given a further push by the European Parliament Report adopted by an overwhelming majority by the Foreign Affairs Committee in June 2013 on the basis of a draft by the Portuguese MEP Ana Gomes5. The essential message of the report is the following statement.
“A European Maritime Security Strategy (EMSS) is needed to ensure an integrated and comprehensive approach, focusing specifically on the threats, risks, challenges and
opportunities present at sea… the EMSS, while grounded in European values and principles, must develop synergies and joint responses mobilising all relevant institutions and actors,
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both civilian and military; the EMSS should identify all potential threats, from conventional security threats to those posed by natural disasters and climate change, from threats affecting the protection of vital marine resources to the security of maritime infrastructure and trade flows; it must also identify the specific means and capabilities needed to address all challenges, including intelligence, surveillance and patrolling, search and rescue, sealift, evacuation of EU and other nationals from crisis zones, enforcing embargoes, and assistance to any CSDP-led missions and operations”
The direction is clear. What is needed first is a comprehensive analysis of all threats to the sovereignty of a country and the security and well-being of its citizens and its economic activities, as well as the sustainability of ocean resources on which they are based. What then follows is an identification of all the capabilities, whether military or civil that are available to deal with the threat. And finally systems of coordination of action by these capabilities need to be developed.
The report “regrets the fact that the situation which persists today is one of duplication, overlap, waste of resources and turf war among EU bodies and agencies working in the field of maritime security; urges the EU to further study ways in which it can reduce the
administrative and financial burden stemming from useless overlap of functions, expertise, equipment and resources among several EU bodies and actors, thus enabling the HR/VP to assert her coordinating function;
The report then “calls for coordination and articulation efforts to be mainstreamed into the EU Maritime Security Strategy, in which clear guidelines should be outlined for specific cooperation between relevant Commission Directorates-General, including Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Home Affairs, Justice, Enterprise and Industry, Mobility and Transport, Taxation and Customs Union, Research and Innovation, and Development, as well as the European External Action Service and the Service for Foreign Policy Instruments; the same should be done for inter-agency cooperation between the EDA, EMSA, SatCen, Europol, Frontex, the EU Military Staff, the Crisis Management and Planning Directorate, the EU Intelligence Analysis Centre and the relevant authorities in the Member States.”
The report also “calls for the creation of a truly European coastguard function, based on the experience already gained by Frontex and the European Patrol Network, to which distinct governmental bodies and entities provide capabilities, acting within a remit of case-law stemming from Justice and Home Affairs cooperation, aimed at protecting EU borders, European citizens and the lives of people in danger on the coastal waters of the Union”. This looks like the old demand of the Parliament for a European coastguard, but the use of the word function indicates that it goes more in the direction of the coordination of national functions rather than their integration into a single EU authority.
This is a broad agenda and the fact that the Commission and the External Action Service are now aiming for a joint paper on EMSS to be ready for the 2014 June European Council, rather than for the December 2013 Council, for which it was originally announced, is an indication of the internal difficulties to have it agreed.
Several Member States have been active in putting forward their own ideas in advance of the paper from the EU institutions.
France, under the leadership of Defence Minister Jean-Yves le Drian, who as President of Brittany had been one of the most prominent advocates of IMP, has contributed a paper along similar lines to that of the Parliament. It points out that it is fundamental to have real-time knowledge of the situation of ships within a maritime zone. It goes on to support the parliamentary initiative on coastguard functions:
“The promotion of the coastguard function enables us to make a clear difference between the implementation structures and those in charge of capacities building. Adopting this approach would permit to do without creating a new supranational structure which would compete with the existing Administrations. It dedicates more resources to securing European maritime areas by combining the coastal states resources and more importantly enables to organise a coordinated contribution of the whole of Europe.”
Such ideas go some way towards a common policy to deal with maritime security in the
territorial waters and Exclusive Economic Zones of EU Member States. But they are, of course, insufficient for a more effective policy to deal with threats further afield. In this regard, the Parliament’s report
“notes that the Atlantic Ocean is Europe’s lifeline for trade; is concerned that the Atlantic, and in particular the Caribbean zone, is a route used for the transit of drugs coming from South America; is worried by the fact that the development of economic activities in the coming decades, notably with the enlargement of the Panama canal, could foster the rise of criminal activities in the zone; believes that the West African coast, and specifically the Gulf of Guinea, today hosts some of the most substantial impending threats against Europe; is deeply concerned that along the West African coastline serious challenges are developing in relation to criminal activity, trafficking of drugs, human beings and weapons; concurrently, Gulf of Guinea countries are increasingly an operating ground for regional terrorist networks, such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, whose actions spill over to neighbours and which are linked to networks with global outreach, such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, as the crisis in Mali is vividly illustrating.”
Dealing with such challenges is clearly part of EU external policy. How is the EMSS likely to respond to them? The French paper praises the progress made by the European Defence Agency with its Pooling and Sharing programme but regards this as insufficient. It calls for the emergence of a Single Market in Europe for the acquisition of maritime security and defence equipment. Without this, the temptation for cash-strapped Member States to buy outside Europe will grow and the gaps in the EU’s capabilities will not be filled.
The French paper also calls for Member States to “make efforts to adapt their navies to more multi-mission capabilities, such as maritime safety, humanitarian assistance, protection of offshore energy resources, the fight against illegal trafficking of all kinds, and more
In this formulation we can sense an ongoing struggle. Dealing with security threats more
efficiently pushes inexorably towards the flexible use of capabilities, such as the use of naval assets for civilian purposes and the acquisition of more multi-purpose rather than specialized vessels by both navies and coastguards. At the same time tradition and existing legislation and administrative structures stand in the way. Naval officers may feel it beneath their dignity to engage in constabulary activities on the oceans, even if they have traditionally done so in dealing with pirates, and indeed do so now within the EUNAVFOR Atalanta mission off the Horn of Africa. And some countries, such as Germany, prohibit their navies from doing so, for understandable historical reasons.
Portugal is also active in contributing to the discussion. In a paper from its Directorate General for Maritime Policy it calls for DG MARE to become officially part of the “external relations family” in the European Commission, to work with the External Action Service to coordinate the external and security aspects of maritime policy. It suggests the appointment of a Special Representative for the maritime domain, who would provide the counterpart within the EEAS.
It too emphasises the importance of an integrated and effective maritime surveillance and it sees this as providing a model to be offered to third countries as part of external cooperation programmes. These should be directed to providing advice and training on a wide range of subjects, covering regulation, operations, and institution-building designed to strengthen maritime security capabilities.
One example of this which is quoted in the Portuguese paper and also in the Parliament report is the Critical Maritime Routes in the Gulf of Guinea Programme (CRIMGO), which is aimed at improving the safety of the waters of the Gulf of Guinea by providing training for
coastguards and setting up a network of information-sharing among the authorities of seven coastal states of West Africa, to be funded by the Instrument for Stability.
Of all the world’s oceans, the Atlantic is our nearest and arguably the one in which our interests and our capabilities are most closely aligned. And it is likely to see important changes in the decades to come. These are spelled out in the book “The Fractured Ocean: Current
Challenges to Maritime Policy in the Wider Atlantic”, published by the German Marshall Fund of the United States in December 20126.
According to this book, the booming economies on both shores of the south Atlantic, led by Brazil, South Africa, and Angola, will generate increasing trade flows, and large new deep-water port facilities are being developed in Santos, Suape, and Acu in Brazil; at Lobito in Angola; and at Walvis Bay in Namibia. The opening of the expanded Panama Canal will allow much larger ships to make the shorter passage from Brazil and the Eastern U.S. to China, and the pattern of shipping routes will change significantly. Economic activity will also grow rapidly offshore on both sides of the South Atlantic as oil and gas reserves come on stream and ancillary industries develop. New safety and new security demands will arise from these changes.
6 The authors are John Richardson, Armando Marques Guedes, Paul Holthus, Xavier de la Gorce, and Anne-Francois de Saint Salvy
In addition, global fishing fleets are increasingly focusing their efforts on the southern Atlantic as stocks, particularly in areas beyond national jurisdiction, decline in northern waters. Control of illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing thus presents a challenge to sustainable
development of the basin and is emblematic of a general, and extremely serious, threat to the future prosperity and peace of the hemisphere.
Unfortunately there is a vacuum in terms both of national maritime governance structures in most littoral states and of any overarching system of cooperative governance, with the exception of ineffective regional fisheries commissions.
Within this vacuum, non-state groups pursuing illegal activities are thriving. As we saw above, piracy and robbery at sea are a serious problem in the Gulf of Guinea, and there is reason to fear their rise in the Caribbean.
The routes for trafficking drugs from South America are evolving and diversifying and
increasingly using the South Atlantic as a conduit, often using the Cape Verde islands as staging posts. Human trafficking is on the increase, and there is a particular problem with illegal
immigration flows in the Caribbean and from North Africa toward Europe.
Illegal discharges of contaminants into the ocean go largely undiscovered and uncontrolled. Detection of these activities relies on maritime surveillance systems, which are largely
nonexistent beyond national borders in the South Atlantic. Interdiction depends on coastguard and naval capabilities, which are typically substandard, particularly in Africa, although there are of course exceptions.
And effective judicial pursuit of criminals, whose activities show no respect for national borders, is hampered by an insufficiently developed network of mutual assistance agreements between states.
In general, the book finds that there is vastly inadequate exchange of information between South Atlantic states with respect to illegal maritime activities. This applies as well to the exchange of intelligence of a classified nature, a particular handicap in the fight against terrorist activity. One important reason for this governance vacuum is the heterogeneity of the South Atlantic. The history of the southern basin goes a long way toward explaining why this is so, but the result is that there is no common awareness of the challenges, no common consciousness of sharing responsibility for the husbandry of a common resource, and no transnational governing structures, either formal or informal.
In order for future economic activity to be sustainable and criminal actions to be frustrated, it is argued that it is urgent that an Atlantic Basin consciousness be fostered and that a program of exchange of ideas, experiences, and expertise, leading to common projects for improving governance, be put in place.
The establishment of a partnership between the EU and the South Atlantic countries within the framework of the new EMSS would be a demonstration that the EU is indeed capable of putting meat on the bones of an integrated approach to the maritime challenges of its most proximate ocean. It could begin with the sharing of expertise and the provision of financial assistance to the south Atlantic countries to build up both a system of shared surveillance of the south Atlantic and the coastguard capabilities needed to interdict illegal activities.
How many of these ideas are likely to be realized within the next term of the Parliament and the Commission? There is no doubt that the paradigm of a truly integrated maritime policy has become the template against which to measure the current state of affairs and the desirable goals for the future. But the obstacles that are described above are formidable. Breaking down the walls between ministries, agencies, and directorates general and moving towards a practice of effective coordination will require nothing less than a sea-change in governance culture in the maritime domain. It will be a great adventure, a voyage of discovery and achievement to rank with those of the Great Explorers.
It may require the appointment of a Commissioner for maritime affairs with the vision of Henry the Navigator, the determination of Vasco da Gama, and the people skills of James Cook. He or she should take over a strengthened DG MARE working with the EEAS under the overall direction of the High Representative/Vice President of the Commission, chairing a revived Steering Group of Commissioners, and coordinating all the EU maritime agencies. And why not appoint him/her at the same time as Special Representative for Maritime Security in the EEAS? But allies will be needed for such proposals among the Member States, particularly those on the Atlantic seaboard. Perhaps this is another opportunity for Portugal to build upon its heritage of Atlantic exploration.
