Incorporating Ocean Acidification Into The Revised Marine Strategy Framework Directive - Submission To The European Commission’s Call For Evidence
March 9, 2026
The OA Alliance EU Stakeholders Working Group grew out of the meeting, ‘Exploring Marine Management and Policy Response to Ocean Acidification,’ which was held 24 May, 2023 on the margins of European Maritime Day 2023 in Brest, France.
Since then, this working group has met quarterly and has continued to advance the integration of Ocean Acidification into European legal and policy documents. In this capacity, we responded to the call for evidence for the revision of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), an initiative aimed at facilitating marine environmental protection, simplifying the rules, their implementation, data use, and the administrative burden.
The OA Alliance submission to the revision of the MSFD calls on the European Commission to account for climate-ocean changes, such as Ocean and Coastal Acidification, by:
Incorporating OA into the MSFD Descriptors and their criteria and criteria elements under the Commission Decision.
Collecting and reporting OA information and data under the monitoring and reporting programmes of the Member States and subsequently incorporating the OA information into the Programmes of Measures.
Reporting the OA information to the Regional Seas Convention to allow for harmonised and coordinated OA action.