All at sea; regionalisation and integration of marine policy in Europe

A major challenge of future EU fisheries management is the integration of fisheries management with broader marine management. The focus on ecosystem based management is both a driver for regionalisation as for integration of policy to cover all sectors and activities at the scale of the marine ecosystem. The central question of this paper is: how are regionalisation and integration discourses in EU management of marine resources influencing the Integrated Maritime Policy, the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the Common Fisheries Policy differently and which challenges arise because of these differences? We will look at the current model of governance applied and see whether this is durable in the longer term and analyse specifically the implications of integrated regional marine management. We will conclude that the process of regionalisation and integration of policy requires a further development of the marine governance system, positioning the regional level into the multi-level governance system.