In-depth assessment of the Member States reporting for the Marine Strategy’s biodiversity monitoring

This work aims to develop recommendations and propose emerging reporting requirements for the update of the monitoring programmes pursuant to MSFD Article 17. Such recommendations will enhance the consistency, comparability and coherence in the monitoring and assessment of marine biodiversity. The results are tailored according to the requirements of the new Commission Decision (2017/848/EU) for criteria and methodological standards to determine Good Environmental Status. The application of the risk-based approach in the European marine waters is amongst the emerging reporting requirements, being less tackled in the first MSFD cycle. The analysis goes deeper than the MSFD Art.12 evaluation performed by the European Commission (COM/2017/3; SWD/2017/1) after the Member States reporting. Its scope goes beyond the evaluation of the individual Member States performance and compliance, being focused on the technical assessment and evaluation of the reports at regional/subregional scales. The perspective of this analysis is to improve the current approach of the MSFD biodiversity Descriptors’ monitoring reports, but the conclusions are relevant to all MSFD Descriptors.JRC.D.2-Water and Marine Resource