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Environmental and Maritime Issues in Europe’s four sea basins |
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International Seminar
Reykjavik, 27-28 May 2009
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The International seminar on Environmental and Maritime Issues in Europe's four sea basins organized by the at the University of Iceland was held in Rekjavik on May 27th and 28th. The rich programme of the conference joined experts, officials and practitioners. |
 eu4seas_reykjavik_programme 99.19 Kb
Alyson Bailes: "EU approaches have been referred as ‘just throwing money’, top-down, and even neo-colonial" |
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Oil field in Azerbaijan (Caspian Sea)
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Reykjavík, 29 May 2009
The aim of the seminar was to provide an inside look of multilateral co‐operation (notion and practice) in the four maritime basins (Mediterranean, Baltic, Black and Caspian). The discussions addressed sub‐regional conventions; management of borders and safety of the maritime space; sources of maritime pollution and maintaining biodiversity.
The seminar revealed that the seas are suffering from similar sources of
pollution but the ways being used to tackle it are different, meaning
the role of international organizations and the EU's involvement.
Alyson
Bailes argued that one obvious role for the EU could be to
promote macro-coordination of sub-regional inititiatives but, she
wondered emphatically "is it ready to do so and to do it in the right
way?" She reminded that "EU approaches had been referred to here as
‘just throwing money’, top-down, and even neo-colonial".
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| She added that it was true that in the 1990s at least, Brussels
officials often saw effective sub-regionalism as a threat because
it could create frameworks of regulation conflicting with and
complicating the EU’s own continent-wide approach, and any
'ganging-up' in regional groups made it harder to
conduct enlargement talks on a strictly country-by-country basis. There
are some signs that the EU has learned lessons (and perhaps
some necessary modesty) since then. A modest and realistic view of the
EU’s role, perhaps especially in the Black Sea and Caspian Sea
basins, should lead us to acknowledge and explore also the
potential for burden sharing with other institutions: NATO, OSCE, UN agencies, IMO etc, etc E4SEAS addressed the challenge of bringing together scientific and policy-making approaches. |
EU4SEAS addressed the challenge of bringing together scientific and policy-making approaches.
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