The guidelines are accompanied by a Commission Staff Working Document Integrating Biodiversity and Nature Protection into Port Development which puts the recommendations in a policy context. Both documents are accessible through the website of the European Commission. The development of the guidelines followed a request of the ports and maritime services sector. It was one of the main action points that emerged from the Commission\u2018s 2007 Ports Policy Communication. The guidelines aim to clarify issues related to the application of the EU environmental legislation to port development projects and to address legal uncertainty regarding the interpretation of the Birds and Habitats Directives.<\/p>\n
The Commission working paper acknowledges the positive attitude of the port sector for reconciling port development with nature protection and highlights the port sector’s active commitment to sustainable operations. Overall, it sets the guidelines in their political context while recognising their status as a document representing the official views of the Commission.<\/p>\n
The publication comes as the result of a constructive process of cooperation between DG Environment, DG MOVE, port authorities and other relevant stakeholders that initiated back in 2008 within the Estuary Expert Group. ESPO has been an active partner since the beginning and feels that the demonstrated successful process of cooperation and exchange of ideas could set the example and the basis for further work.<\/p>\n
The EC guidelines come to address some of the outstanding issues and to provide practical guidance to ports and project developers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The European Commission published its Guidance Document on the implementation of Birds and Habitats Directives in estuaries and coastal zones with particular attention to port development and dredging and is commonly referred to as the \u2018port environmental guidelines\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":10138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-10137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-products-services-greenport"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10139,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10137\/revisions\/10139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10137"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=10137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}