European Ocean Act

Europe finally has a strategy for the ocean. Now it has to turn that strategy into action.

The European Ocean Act. Building an Ocean Union

A historic opportunity to give the ocean a comprehensive, forward-looking law it has long lacked – and to set a benchmark the world can look to.

The ocean is Europe’s economic lifeline, a life-support system, and its first line of defence. Yet it remains one of the continent’s most overlooked strategic assets – governed in a fragmented manner, sector by sector, with no single law weaving the pieces together.

It is time to address that gap. The ocean has begun crossing tipping points; Europe’s regional seas are still in poor condition; ecosystems are depleted; and competition over routes, resources and data is intensifying. The Ocean Act arrives just as Europe is being tested on its security, competitiveness and strategic autonomy – and a large part of the answer is at sea.

+90%

of the excess heat humanity generates is absorbed by the ocean

80%

of the world’s biodiversity lives in the sea

$3 trillion

the value a healthy blue economy could sustain globally

The Central Ask

A European ocean leadership for the 21st century
The Ocean Act is the opportunity of a generation – one too rare to spend on a technical fix. Used well, it can give Europe a true ocean law: an implementable, ambitious vision for European ocean governance, far beyond a reform of the Maritime Spatial Planning Directive. Spatial planning is an indispensable tool, but not a strategy. As the umbrella law it could be, the Act can close the gaps that planning never could:

Connect. The ocean across policies
Stop treating the ocean as a sectoral concern. It should run through the policy landscape – trade, energy, defence, food, culture, digitalisation – and be coherently addressed throughout.

Align. One plan, real deadlines
Europe’s ocean objectives are scattered across the policy landscape. Pull them into a single, prioritised register, with time-bound targets for 2030, 2040 and 2050 and an effective mechanism to enforce them.

Clarify. One shared vocabulary
Set common definitions – turning paper parks into real Marine Protected Areas and making “blue economy” mean activity that rebuilds the sea, not depletes it. Without them, 27 Member States deliver 27 different results.

Elevate. Beyond spatial planning
Build on the Maritime Spatial Planning Directive but go further – resolving its mismatch with the Marine Strategy Framework Directive so that how we use the sea is finally conditioned on restoring its health. A tool for mapping competing uses becomes a strategy with direction and force.

What the Act can deliver.

To support this call, the Foundation, in partnership with Europe Jacques Delors, has produced six documents – the “Building Blocks for an Ocean Act”- which set out recommendations under each of the Pact’s priorities, on what the Act can deliver.

Ocean Health

Start where everything starts

European seas are in poor condition. The European Environment Agency reports signs of stress at every scale – from the mix of marine species and habitats to the very physics and chemistry of the sea. The Baltic has become a global cautionary tale on eutrophication, Atlantic currents are slowing down, while the Mediterranean is battered by marine heatwaves, acidification and overfishing. Rebuilding this blue natural capital is not only an environmental duty; it is the precondition for the development of a true blue economy. As the Commission puts it, we must “sustain the ocean that sustains us.”

Read the full Building Block on Ocean Protection and Restoration.

A Regenerative Blue Economy

An economy that rebuilds what it uses

Today, scarce time and money go to keeping unsustainable sunset industries afloat – often with lingering environmental damage – at the expense of the regenerative sectors Europe has barely begun to explore.

The Act should set the basis for a European Policy for a Regenerative Blue Economy – taking the IUCN definition as a starting point – with percentage targets that steer the Union toward strategic, decarbonised, genuinely sustainable activity. Some of Europe’s strongest ocean sectors, such as shipping and coastal tourism, are also among the most carbon- and capital-intensive, which makes their transition both a necessity and a lever: what is today a cause for concern can become Europe’s competitive edge. The European budget now being negotiated must raise its funding for the ocean, with clear ring-fencing or a dedicated fund.

Read the full building block on a Sustainable and Regenerative Blue Economy.

Maritime Security

Europe’s first line of defence

Ghost fleets financing conflicts, interference with submarine cables and shipping lanes, fast-rising competition over new routes opening through the Arctic ice – these are maritime problems with, at least in part, maritime solutions. Europe needs secure, open sea lanes: 90% of its external trade and 40% of its internal trade move by sea. And its critical undersea infrastructure is increasingly exposed – roughly 99% of intercontinental data flows through submarine cables, many of them foreign-owned, which includes trillions worth of financial transactions.

The Act should align with Europe’s emerging security strategy and treat the naval dimension as a priority, while making clear that defence and conservation are not opposites: dual-use technology that monitors both European waters and the marine environment can help secure and protect them at once.

Read the full Building Block on Maritime Security and Defence.

Ocean Diplomacy

Lead the world, not just our own waters

International ocean governance has entered a new era – and the momentum built in recent years, particularly since UNOC3, is real but fragile. It has to be turned into effective implementation before it slips away.

The Act should carry Europe’s first common Foreign Policy for the Ocean – a shared external ambition and plan of action agreed by the EU as a whole – putting the Union at the helm of global ocean action as an environmental, geopolitical and economic priority. It should set out Europe’s path to implementing the High Seas Treaty and its unwavering commitment to the multilateral cooperation still needed to win the global agreements ahead.

Read the full Buildi ng Block on International Ocean Governance and Blue Diplomacy

Coastal Communities

63 000 km of stewardship

Europe is a peninsular continent, with a coastline twice as long as Africa’s and around 40% of Europeans living along its shores. Local and regional engagement – above all by coastal communities – has been one of the strongest drivers of ocean conservation. Yet the legal and financial scaffolding rarely supports them or meets their specific needs.

The Act must ensure that anyone willing to protect the ecological and social fabric of Europe’s coastlines, at any level of governance, finds in the Union a source of financial, technical and regulatory support, with as little administrative friction as possible – providing an enabling environment for prosperity through conservation and restoration

Read the full Building Block on Coastal Communities and Islands.

Ocean Research & Innovation

Leading the “Greatest Era of Exploration”*

As key world powers retreat from ocean research, observation and exploration, the case for European autonomy is peaking. Just 5% of the ocean has been thoroughly explored – and the better we understand it, the better our odds of mitigating and adapting to the defining crises of the century. Europe is a research leader, with a dense network of universities, marine labs and industrial consortia, but it lacks a coherent pan-European strategy: duplication persists, and the links to the Union’s geo-economic and political interests are weak.

The Act is a historic chance to lay out an EU marine research and technology strategy, and to connect research and innovation to defence, economic strength and climate, to name a few strategic priorities. The momentum is already building: OceanEye, the EU’s new ocean-observation initiative launched in 2026 under the Ocean Pact, sets out to make Europe the world’s leading source of ocean intelligence – contributing more than a third of the global ocean observing system by 2035, anchoring an international alliance behind the Global Ocean Observing System, and bringing a fully operational European Digital Twin of the Ocean online by 2030. The Act should give initiatives like it a durable legal home. At a time of slowing currents and breached planetary boundaries, ocean data is of civilisational importance. And it is time to close the emotional distance between people and the sea – best begun young, by making ocean literacy a formal part of school curricula across Europe.

Read the full Building Block on Ocean Research, Knowledge, Literacy and Skills.

*by Sylvia Earle

Europe’s Ocean Moment

The Ocean Act is Europe’s chance to turn decades of incremental progress into one coherent framework – and to recognise, at last, that the ocean is central to its identity, prosperity, security and future.

We urge Europe’s decision-makers to adopt an Act on par with the scale of the challenge, laying the ground for a true Ocean Union.

From Pact to Act.

This is the second stage of a journey the Foundation helped set in motion. Ahead of the 2024 European elections, the Oceano Azul Foundation and Europe Jacques Delors convened a group of leading European ocean experts to draft a Manifesto for a European Ocean Pact.

The call was answered, in June 2025, at the United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, when President von der Leyen and European leaders presented the European Ocean Pact, the continent’s first holistic ocean strategy, built around six priorities that run from ocean health to maritime security and international governance. The Pact gave Europe a shared vision for the sea. What it still lacked was the binding force to deliver it. Announced for 2027, the European Ocean Act is the opportunity to turn that vision into law, with measurable targets, coordinated action and real accountability. From Pact to Act.

Read the full Blueprint for a transformative European Ocean Act.