ETC/ICM data call: Marine Strategy Framework Directive – 2018 Data request for Article 17 updates of Articles 8, 9 and 10

Friday, 13 July 2018

Ref. Ares(2018)3747540 - 13/07/2018

EUROPEAN COMMISSION

DIRECTORATE-GENERAL ENVIRONMENT

Directorate C - Quality of Life

ENV.C.2 - Marine Environment & Water Industry

Head of Unit

Brussels,
ENV/C2/DC /gm env.c.2(2018)4196940

Dear colleagues, 

In accordance with Article 17(2) of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), Member States have to review and update their marine strategies every six years. This requires information on Articles 8, 9 and 10 to be updated by 15 July 2018, and to be notified to the European Commission by 15 October 2018 at the latest.

The guidance document for Reporting on the 2018 update of articles 8, 9 & 10 for the Marine Strategy Framework Directive sets out the way in which this reporting is to be undertaken. The types of reports to be uploaded as part of the notification and the reporting procedure are further explained in Annex 1 to this letter. All of the resources highlighted in this data request are available at http://cdr.eionet.europa.eu/help/msfd.

You are strongly encouraged to report through the use of XML files as this helps to ensure the quality and consistency of the information reported. This facilitates its dissemination via WISE Marine and its assessment by the Commission in accordance with Article 12. This assessment is expected to consider the adequacy of the reports, their consistency between the articles and their coherence across the subregion, region and Europe. This assessment is expected to focus in particular on reporting fields as indicated in Annex 2 to this letter. Where this information is available in your text-based report, you are requested to transfer it into the XML files, as these will be the main source of information for the Commission assessment.

You are reminded that it is a legal obligation to report by 15 October 2018; you are urged to do your utmost to notify the reports by this deadline. If you consider there is a significant risk of not being able to meet this obligation, we would be grateful if you could indicate, for our planning purposes, by when you intend to report, via email to ENV-MARINE-ENVIRONMENT@ec.europa.eu.

We take this opportunity to thank you for your support and look forward to receiving your reports in due course.

Matjaz Malgaj
(e-signed)

Annex 1: Reporting and notification procedures for the 2018 data request on Article 17 updates of MSFD Articles 8, 9 and 10

Guidance documents

The guidance document for Reporting on the 2018 update of articles 8, 9 & 10 for the Marine Strategy Framework Directive is also accompanied by worked examples. The reporting of the articles needs always to be linked to Marine Reporting Units; in addition, several reference lists of elements and their corresponding codes have been prepared in order to have more coherence across the Member State's reports.

Specifically for Article 19(3), which deals with making available the datasets from the monitoring programmes and assessments, a recommendations document, with annexes including examples of data modelling, is available.

Schemas, data specifications and QA/QC

Five XSD schemas have been developed for reporting the information related to Articles 8, 9 and 10 updates, including the links to the datasets to be made available according to Article 19(3):

• •    ART9_GES: to be used for the reporting of the GES determinations.
• •    ART8_GES: to be used for the reporting of the GES assessments, including the threshold values used.
• •    ART8_ESA: to be used for the reporting of the socio-economic assessments.
• •    ART10_Targets: to be used for the reporting of the environmental targets.
• •    Indicators: to be used for the reporting of the indicators used within the GES assessments (regional or national), as well as the indicators showing progress towards targets. The links to the datasets that have been used are to be reported under this schema.

Member States are expected to submit only one file (XML) per schema.

The MSFD 2018 Data Model (UML) and other resources are available on the resource webpage http://cdr.eionet.europa.eu/help/msfd.

Quality control checks have been developed to ensure good quality of the data reported and are available as descriptions.

Reporting tools

In order to facilitate the generation of the XMLs, the following tools have been developed:    

• Access Database [1] : it includes all the different elements and enumerations of the schemas, as well as the relationships between them. Together with the database, a conversion tool allows the transformation of the database to XML files for upload to the CDR.
• Web-forms: one web-form has been developed per schema. Member States can directly edit the XMLs through the web-forms. The web-forms allow different users to work on the same schema. Then the XML files generated need to be downloaded and, when needed, they can be merged into one single file per schema before submission to the CDR. It is highly recommended to consult the user guidebefore starting to use the web-forms.

Prefilling resources

Prefilled XML files have been prepared with available information either from the 2012 reporting exercise or from assessments performed under other policies that are relevant for the MSFD reporting. Note that the prefilled information is provided to ease the workload for Member States in preparing their 2018 reporting, if they wish to make use of these resources.

The 2018 reporting is an update of the information reported in 2012. Therefore the information reported in 2012 for Articles 9 and 10 has been prefilled and made available following the ART9_GES and ART10_Targets schemas.

In addition, XML files related to the Common Fisheries Policy (ICES advices) have been prepared following the ART8_GES and Indicators schemas, are available for D3 reporting for the Atlantic and Baltic Member States.

In regards to the assessments coming from the Water Framework Directive 2016 reporting exercise, prefilled XML files have been prepared for D5 and D8 reporting with the information of the water bodies aggregated per River Basin District, unless another type of aggregation has been requested by a Member State.

Specifically for Member States working with HELCOM, a prefilling of ART8_GES and the Indicators schemas has been prepared with the information from the last State of the Baltic Sea assessment.

Specifically for Member States working with OSPAR, a prefilling of the Indicators schema has been prepared with the information from theIntermediate Assessment 2017.

The contents and methodology used for the prefilling can be consulted in the document “Prefilling of XML reports with available assessments (FINAL)”.

Where to report

The reports need to be uploaded to the corresponding country folder in the CDR. Under each country folder, in the EU obligations envelope, there is a sub-collection “Marine Strategy Framework Directive: Article 17 (updates)” within which there is a collection “2018 Reporting – Articles 8, 9 and 10, and related geographic areas”. There are sub-folders for spatial data (Article 4), text reports and XML files related to Articles 8, 9 and 10 updates:

•    REPORTING OBLIGATION FOR: MSFD - ARTICLE 4 - SPATIAL DATA

•    REPORTING OBLIGATION FOR: MSFD - ARTICLES 8, 9 AND 10 - XML DATA

•    REPORTING OBLIGATION FOR: MSFD - ARTICLES 8, 9 AND 10 - TEXT REPORTS

The XML information to be reported needs to be linked to Marine Reporting Units (MRUs) that have been requested in advance. Those Member States that plan to report on updated MRUs, but have not yet submitted them, should upload them to the Central Data Repository as soon as possible and contact the MSFD helpdesk to request the corresponding reporting tools to be updated.

Helpdesks

For questions and help related to content and guidance on 2018 MSFD reporting, please contact the MSFD helpdesk:msfd.helpdesk@eionet.europa.eu.

For technical support related to EIONET in general (e.g. login problems), please contact the EIONET helpdesk: helpdesk@eionet.europa.eu.

Annex 2: XML schema fields and their use in the Article 12 assessment

The table below indicates the draft criteria to be used for the Commission's Article 12 assessment and their links to particular fields in each XML schema. Note that the assessment methodology is subject to testing and modification; it will be presented to the CIS working groups in autumn 2018.

Fields of the schema 'ART9_GES'

Schema class	Schema field	Art 12 assessment
MarineUnit	MarineReportingUnit
GEScomponent	GEScomponent	Adequacy of use of 2017 Decision criteria Coherence between MS in criteria used
GEScomponent	JustificationNonUse	Adequacy of use of 2017 Decision criteria
GEScomponent	JustificationDelay	Coherence between MS in threshold values (level agreed: EU, regional, national)
GESdetermination	Feature
GESdetermination	GESDescription	Adequacy of (qualitative) GES determination Coherence between MS in the (qualitative) determination of GES
GESdetermination	DeterminationDate	Adequacy of use of 2017 Decision criteria
GESdetermination	UpdateType

Fields of the schema 'ART8_GES'

Schema class	Schema field	Art 12 assessment
MarineUnit	MarineReportingUnit	Adequacy of MRUs - follow scales expressed in 2017 Decision Consistency of MRUs between descriptors Coherence of MRU scales within region
OverallStatus	GEScomponent
OverallStatus	Feature
OverallStatus	GESextentThreshold	Adequacy of level of ambition for GES Coherence in level of ambition for GES
OverallStatus	GESextentAchieved	Adequacy of assessment on extent of pressure and impacts
OverallStatus	GESextentUnit
OverallStatus	GESachieved	Coherence between MS on date for achievement of GES (& exceptions)
OverallStatus	DescriptionOverallStatus
OverallStatus	AssessmentPeriod
OverallStatus	RelatedPressures	Coherence between MS in pressures reported
OverallStatus	RelatedTargets
OverallStatus	IntegrationRuleTypeCriteria
OverallStatus	IntegrationRuleDescription Criteria
OverallStatus	IntegrationRuleTypeParameter
OverallStatus	IntegrationRuleDescription Parameter
ElementStatus	Element	Adequacy of elements Coherence of elements between MS
ElementStatus	ElementCode
ElementStatus	ElementCodeSource
ElementStatus	Element2	Adequacy of elements Coherence of elements between MS
ElementStatus	Element2Code
ElementStatus	Element2CodeSource
ElementStatus	ElementSource	Coherence of elements between MS
ElementStatus	DescriptionElement
ElementStatus	ElementStatus	Adequacy of status assessment: proportion ofparameters/criteria/elements with clear outcomes
CriteriaStatus	Criteria	Consistency of assessment with GES determination
CriteriaStatus	CriteriaStatus	Adequacy of status assessment: proportion ofparameters/criteria/elements with clear outcomes
CriteriaStatus	DescriptionCriteria
CriteriaValues	Parameter	Coherence of parameters between MS
CriteriaValues	ParameterOther
CriteriaValues	ThresholdValueUpper	Adequacy of (quantitative) determination of GES (threshold values specified) Coherence between MS in threshold values (level agreed: EU, regional, national)
CriteriaValues	ThresholdValueLower
CriteriaValues	ThresholdQualitative
CriteriaValues	ThresholdValueSource	Coherence between MS in threshold values (level agreed: EU, regional, national)
CriteriaValues	ThresholdValueSourceOther
CriteriaValues	ValueAchievedUpper
CriteriaValues	ValueAchievedLower
CriteriaValues	ValueUnit	Coherence between MS in threshold values (level agreed: EU, regional, national)
CriteriaValues	ValueUnitOther
CriteriaValues	ProportionThresholdValue	Adequacy of level of ambition for GES Coherence in level of ambition for GES
CriteriaValues	ProportionValueAchieved	Adequacy of assessment on extent of pressure and impacts
CriteriaValues	ProportionThresholdValueUnit	Adequacy of level of ambition for GES Coherence in level of ambition for GES
CriteriaValues	Trend
CriteriaValues	ParameterAchieved	Adequacy of status assessment: proportion ofparameters/criteria/elements with clear outcomes
CriteriaValues	DescriptionParameter
CriteriaValues	RelatedIndicator
		Consistency of assessment with GES determination

Fields of the schema 'ART8_ESA'

Art.12 assessment methodology under development

Fields of the schema 'ART10_Targets'

Schema class	Schema field	Art 12 assessment
MarineUnit	MarineReportingUnit	Consistency of MRUs/scales - in relation to MRUs used for Art. 8 [and Art 13]
Target	Feature
Target	TargetCode
Target	Description	Adequacy of target to address achievement of GES Adequacy of target to reflect gap between current (2018) state and GES (targets updated since previous reporting and sufficiently ambitious) Coherence of targets across (sub)region
Target	GEScomponent
Target	Timescale	Adequacy of target - its measurability (SMART)
Target	UpdateDate	Adequacy of target to reflect gap between current (2018) state and GES (targets updated since previous reporting and sufficiently ambitious)
Target	UpdateType
Target	RelatedMeasures	Consistency of targets with measures - directly linked tomeasures which reduce pressure/impact
ProgressAssessment	Element	Adequacy of target - its measurability (SMART)
ProgressAssessment	Element2
ProgressAssessment	Parameter	Adequacy of target - its measurability (SMART)
ProgressAssessment	ParameterOther
ProgressAssessment	TargetValue	Adequacy of target - its measurability (SMART)
ProgressAssessment	ValueAchievedUpper
ProgressAssessment	ValueAchievedLower
ProgressAssessment	ValueUnit	Adequacy of target - its measurability (SMART)
ProgressAssessment	ValueUnitOther
ProgressAssessment	TargetStatus
ProgressAssessment	AssessmentPeriod
ProgressAssessment	Description
ProgressAssessment	RelatedIndicator

Fields of the schema 'Indicators'

Schema class	Schema field	Art 12 assessment
IndicatorAssessment	IndicatorCode
IndicatorAssessment	IndicatorTitle
IndicatorAssessment	IndicatorSource
IndicatorAssessment	IndicatorSourceOther
IndicatorAssessment	UniqueReference
IndicatorAssessment	RelatedTargets
IndicatorAssessment	DatasetVoidReason	Adequacy of access to Art. 8 data products under Art. 19(3)
Feature	GEScomponent
Feature	Feature
MarineUnit	MarineReportingUnit
Datasets	URL	Adequacy of access to Art. 8 data products under Art. 19(3)
Datasets	MD_URL

Electronically signed on 13/07/2018 17:33 (UTC+02) in accordance with article 4.2 (Validity of electronic documents) of Commission Decision 2004/563

[1] Microsoft Access, https://products.office.com/en/access .