Hazardous Substances and Eutrophication Committee 2019

14 March 2019

The annual meeting of the Hazardous Substances and Eutrophication Committee considered a large number of meeting documents and focused on the following priorities; to finalise HASEC’s review of the OSPAR’s North-East Atlantic Environment Strategy (NEAES) 2010-2020; to draft strategic and operational objectives for the NEAES 2020-2030; planning for the QSR 2023 including developing indicators and revising the Common Procedure for identification of eutrophication, and; finalise the applicability and relevance review of HASEC’s measures.

Progress was made with reviewing the North-East Atlantic Environment Strategy 2010-2020. HASEC agreed on the revised high-level evaluation and medium and detailed-level review of progress for the eutrophication and hazardous substances paragraphs. The eutrophication and hazardous substances strategic objectives for the Clean Seas theme were refined and the operational objectives further developed.

HASEC reviewed the applicability of Decisions, Recommendations and other Agreements, with a view to updating measures where required. Contracting parties provided updates on the applicability but further intersessional work was assigned for the majority of the measures. It was agreed Jurists and Linguists group will be informed of two Recommendations that will be requested to be set aside at OSPAR 2019.

A Task Group for the revision of the Common Procedure Agreement was established and the Terms of Reference for the group were drafted.

HASEC agreed on the subsidiary bodies’ proposed products for the JAMP and developed its list of proposed contributions to the Quality Status Report 2023.

More information on the work of HASEC can be found here