| Summary: | The paper analyses the national and regional European maritime clusters according to the sea basin division proposed by the European Union Integrated Maritime Policy: Atlantic and Arctic oceans; Baltic, Black, Mediterranean and North seas. Besides the identification of all maritime sectors by country ? be it at national and/or regional level - a statistical database is established per each and every of the above referred sea basins, in order that a comparative analysis can be developed. Also in line with Wijnolst, Jensen & Sødal (2003) that propose a maritime sector benchmarking - the ?Global Maritime Benchmarking? ? which should allow evaluating the maritime clusters evolution and strength - the paper estimates nine indicators: structural indicators (no. of clusters, no. of companies; no. of employees; no. of sectors; technological level; location); economic indicators (Gross Added Value, production; productivity; profit and rentability rates), internationalization (exports and imports, major clients and suppliers, international average prices, EU and third countries markets shares); critical mass (agglomerations and scale economies by maritime sector) and leader firms; level playing-field (free-competition, monopolistic, oligopolistic markets); innovation (major universities and R&D centers, no. patents, regional innovation systems); institutional framework (governance, connection with regional and national governments)and business networks; labour market (unemployment rate, average wages) and education (major schools and courses by different grades, training centers); and image and communication. Particular attention is attributed to the Atlantic basin strategy - the largest of all the EU Integrated Maritime Policy Basins ? where besides the Blue growth concerns the authors, develop the result of a group of interviews to experts on Blue Geopolitics and Geostrategic. The above comparison between sea basins will allow characterizing ?maritime Europe?, identifying the location of the main excellence ...
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