The Successes and Failures of the European Union Integrated Maritime Policy: Critical Mid-term Review 2007-2013

Abstract

The European Council adopted the first EU Sustainable Development Strategy in 2001 (Gothenburg strategy), later on ambitiously updated in June 2006. The mainstreaming in the maritime domain is the Integrated Maritime Policy (IMP) launched in 2007. This commentary provides a critical mid-term review on the status of IMP implementation, outlining the successes and failures of the implementation process from a governance perspective. The review focuses on the Integrated Maritime Surveillance, one of the pillars of the Integrated Maritime Policy, using this as a case study for evaluating the implementation progress against the stated objectives and the associated governance model. The outcome suggests that while the EU Integrated Maritime Policy has stimulated a lot of interest for a new maritime vision at EU level and has initiated important steps towards its implementation, including new maritime governance paradigm, so far it has failed to promote the necessary changes to boost the cooperative and sustainable environment it has claimed to do. In the particular case of the Integrated Maritime Surveillance, despite the strong political commitment of the European Commission and the considerable budget expenditure, the EU still has not been able to achieve the targeted Common Information Sharing Environment, failing an important milestone towards building sustainability in the maritime domain.