The Netherlands agrees that it is difficult to draw firm conclusions from the OSPAR-IA assessment. At the same time, systematic monitoring aimed at being able to make periodic and firm quantitative statements about the speeds of releases of non-native species could require (financial) efforts that are questionable whether they will be in proportion to real available action perspectives. Based on the assessment of non-native species in the Dutch part of the North Sea (Gittenberger et al. 2017) used by the Netherlands, it can be concluded that only one new species has been identified so far in the 2012-2018 period. This is considerably less than in the three six-year periods before that. The 'qualitative' assessment that the Netherlands has carried out, including vector estimates, shows that sufficient information can also be generated in this way to be able to assess the approximate extent of the introduction problem and which measures to prevent new introductions may still need to be considered (pathway approach).