Effectuating the Marine Strategy Framework Directive under the Common Fisheries Policy: A comparative outlook on legislative competences

Abstract

This research addresses the relationship between the European Union’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). The former is a piece of secondary legislation under the environmental policy area. Both policy areas are understood as different settings under which actors such as the Member States and the EU institutions have different tasks. The research takes a competence perspective and analyzes how different competence distributions under both settings might influence the effectuation of the MSFD’s objectives under the CFP. It is concluded that under the current CFP, the competence distribution is different from the MSFD to the degree that it hampers effectuation of the MSFD’s objectives under the CFP. In a next step, to propose changes to remedy the aforementioned inconsistencies, the CFP reform is addressed. The EU’s Commission’s proposal for a new Basic Regulation under the CFP includes several changes that will increase the compatibility between both settings’ competence distributions. There remain, however, questions whether the use of competences under the CFP is secured to effectively enable pursuing of the MSFD’s objectives.