Good Environmental Status (GES) assessments of EU marine waters by features

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (Directive 2008/56/EC) requires Member States to report every six years on the environmental status of their marine waters (Article 8(1a, b)). These assessments are made in relation to the Member State’s determination of good environmental status (GES) (Article 9(1)), which itself is structured according to the criteria and methodological standards laid down in Commission Decision (EU) 2017/848.

This ‘GES’ dashboard presents the data reported on the extent to which GES had been achieved by 2018 for a set of ‘Features’ within each MSFD Annex I descriptor (for example, the Feature ‘eutrophication’ for Descriptor 5, and the Features ‘Grazing birds’ and ‘Wading birds’ for Descriptor 1).

Data processing

The dashboard uses the reporting field ‘GESachieved’ in the schema ‘Art8_GES’ which expresses the date by which GES was or is expected to be achieved. The reporting of this field indicates the situation for the MRU as a whole; more specific data on the extent of GES within each MRU (e.g., the number of contaminants or habitat types in good status) are not presented here. To simplify the presentation of the data in the dashboard, the reporting categories have been aggregated as shown below:

Category in field ‘GESachieved’ in schema ‘Art8_GES’	Category shown in GES dashboard
GES achieved by 2018	GES achieved by 2018
GES achieved by 2020 [note this date refers to MSFD’s overall goal to achieve GES by 2020]	GES not achieved by 2018
GES expected to be achieved later than 2020, Article 14 exception reported	GES not achieved by 2018
GES expected to be achieved later than 2020, no Article 14 exception reported	GES not achieved by 2018
Not assessed	Not assessed
Unknown	Not assessed
Not relevant	Not assessed

Please note that a short technical report is under construction

Good Environmental Status (GES) assessments of EU marine waters by features

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