| Summary: | The vision of the OSPAR Commission and the Convention for the protection of the marineenvironment in the North-East Atlantic is a clean, healthy and biologically diverse ocean usedsustainably. Within the Hazardous Substances Strategy, the Commission has prioritizedsubstances for which measures, actions and background documents where adopted in order toreach the stated vision; cessation of losses, discharges and emissions of contaminants andconcentrations of anthropogenic substances close to zero, and for naturally occurringsubstances at background levels in the North-East Atlantic. Due to constitutive regulatorywork within the European Commission as well as the development of international treaties,the background documents of the prioritized substances have not been continually updated.This report analyzed and evaluated if and which of the OSPAR background documentsneeded updating, in addition to giving suggestions on potential further actions OSPAR couldtake in order to protect the marine environment against hazardous substances. This was doneby reviewing the current legislative status of the prioritized substances under REACH, theStockholm Convention, the EU Water Framework Directive as well as the biocidal and plantprotection products regulations. Where possible, monitoring data was incorporated in theevaluation. This report presented generalized groupings of suggested OSPAR actions for eachof the background documents; substances which require no additional OSPAR actions;substances which are not considered fulfilling the criteria as hazardous substances and shouldbe removed from the LCPA; substances for which additional actions may be needed;substances which require continuous monitoring and potentially evaluations of needs foradditional measures. In this report it is suggested that OSPAR in the future takes a moreactive role acting as a safety net for the EU regulations, with the aim of protecting the marineenvironment in the North-East Atlantic. The OSPAR Contracting Parties should decide onhow to follow ...
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