Communication of the EU commission for a strategy of the EU on marine safety



Today the EU commission and the high representative of foreign politics of the EU, Catherine Ashton, have adopted a combined communication to the Parliament and the Council of the European Union that a strategy of the EU for marine safety proposes and the areas in which the cooperation between the various marine subjects, from the Coastgards to the Navies, from the Harbour Authorities to Customs, it can be improved. The document will as a basis serve for the job with the Member States for the definition of a strategy of marine safety of the EU.

The scope of the new strategy is that to characterize the marine interests of the EU which the prevention of the conflicts, the vital infrastructure protection, the effective control of the external frontiers, the protection of the total commerce and the prevention of the illegal peach, and is also to evidence the variety of risks in which the EU and its citizens can incur: marine territorial disputes, marine piracy, terrorism against the ships and the ports or other infrastructures, organized crime that work on the sea, until the potential impacts of natural disasters or catastrophic events.

"Safety and the well-being of the European citizens - Catherine Ashton has commented - depend remarkablly from free and sure seas. It is therefore necessary that the European Union faces the marine threats and challenges. We need an integrated approach, as demonstrated in the Horn of Africa, where we have reached turned out meaningful in the fight to piracy. This communication opens the road to a use more systematic than all the instruments that we have to our disposition and it will afford to speak us with a single international voice to our partner".

"To guarantee safety of our seas and the oceans - the European commissioner for the marine Transactions and fishing has declared, Maria Damanaki - it is a primary objective of the European Union. Our citizens expect effective answers for the protection of the ports and the installations offshore, in order to assure our commerce by sea, in order to face the potential threats deriving from criminal activities in sea or possible controversies on the marine borders. Today we are completing an important step ahead. It is the first time that the European Union is developing a general strategy of this type that will contribute to promote the blue increase and the creation of new places of work in the marine field".