Answer given by Vice-President Mogherini on behalf of the Commission
13.5.2016
The Helsinki Commission (Helcom), which is the governing body of the Regional Sea Convention for the protection of the Baltic marine environment, has a working-group (‘Helcom Submerged’) that deals with sea-dumped chemical munitions. The EU is one of the contracting parties to the Helsinki Convention and will hold the rotating chair of Helcom from 2016 to 2018. The Commission supports Helcom's activities in this subject area through the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme and the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR), where the policy area ‘Hazards’ coordinates cooperation activities in the Baltic to mitigate and remediate historic contamination in that region. An example is the Chemical Munitions Search and Assessment (Chemsea) project[1], an EUSBSR flagship project which received funding from the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme. A follow-up project Daimon has received funding from the new Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme and has applied for flagship status.
The Commission services and the European External Action Service (EEAS) are also involved in the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP). For projects concerning the Baltic Sea, NDEP cooperates with the Helcom and its Baltic Sea Action Plan aimed at eliminating remaining hot spots.
Regarding the 2nd question of the Honourable Member, the Commission does not intend to issue a legislative proposal on this question. However, Member States have the obligation to reach ‘good environmental status’ of their marine environment by 2020 under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive[2].