Transboundary marine spatial planning across Europe: Trends and priorities in nearly two decades of project work

As an instrument intended, amongst other things, to reduce transboundary conflicts, Transboundary Marine Spatial Planning (TMSP) has gained significant attention by coastal nations and regions recently, especially in Europe. Rather than leading to a joint marine spatial plan, TMSP is more of a continuous process of transboundary cooperation. This paper discusses the understandings of TMSP, tracks current progress of TMSP projects in Europe and examines their underlying priorities, so as to gain lessons and experience for the development of TMSP in the future. Using the project database of the European MSP Platform, European TMSP-related projects were subject to quantitative and qualitative analysis. The main findings are: (1) there are two accelerating periods of TMSP project development (2006–2010, 2014–2016), which coincide with relevant EU policy development, with the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas accounting for more projects than other sea basins; (2) TMSP projects in different sea basins have different priorities in marine activities and cross-cutting issues, with fisheries and conservation having the largest proportions respectively; (3) most projects are focusing on the pre-planning stages of marine spatial planning processes, and no attention has yet been given to plan implementation in the TMSP projects