Studies in the field of the Common Fisheries Policy and Maritime Affairs, No FISH/2006/09, Lot 2 – Legal Aspects of Maritime Spatial Planning

The background to this project is the development of the European Union (EU) Maritime Policy. The year-long public consultation exercise for the Maritime Policy revealed broad stakeholder support for the development of Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) in European Waters.

The objectives of this project are:

• to examine the constraints imposed on MSP by international and European Community (EC) law relating to a range of specific activities;
• to propose a set of indicators to assist in measuring progress towards MSP;
• to describe practices for planning and licensing of marine activities in a sample of coastal Member States; and
• to assess the relationship between the type of constitutional governance structure of a country and its ability to develop effective MSP.

Finally, some preliminary conclusions are developed.