The marine environment and coastal zones: the Marine Strategy Directive and marine planning

David Langlet

Chapter 17 in Research Handbook on EU Water Law, 2026, pp 306-325 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The EU has the world's most comprehensive legislation for the protection and sustainable use of the marine environment, covering several national jurisdictions. Still, it struggles to achieve sustainable development for its marine environment. This chapter looks at the EU law that addresses the protection and use of the marine coastal environment and its resources, including ocean space itself. In terms of legislation, this means engaging primarily with the 2008 Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and the 2014 Marine Spatial Planning Directive. The chapter provides an overview of the policy context from which the Directives have developed, and it looks at their objectives and the mechanisms that are employed in their pursuit. It also highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the legal approaches that the EU has adopted, including in its attempts to deal with regulatory fragmentation, competing interests, issues of scale, and the fact that not even the EU can regulate activities that affect the marine environment on its own but instead depends on regional and sometimes global cooperation and harmonization.

Keywords: Marine Strategy Framework Directive; Marine spatial planning; Marine environmental protection; Good environmental status; Coastal zone management; EU marine policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035336425
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