In a report presented to the European Parliament and Council in late July, the European Commission found that the goal of biologically diverse, clean and healthy seas by 2020 is unlikely to be achieved through the measures put in place by Member States under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive.
The European Marine Energy Centre announced it has provided a series of metocean data sets to be used in a new Scottish open innovation competition, in a bid to stimulate creative thinking and data science to design new data products for the benefit of the marine environment, communities and economy.
Since April 2016, when the first US LNG carrier arrived in the Portuguese port of Sines, EU imports of LNG from the US have increased from zero to 2.8 billion cubic meters. Now, the two countries agreed to further bolster their strategic cooperation with respect to energy.
LNG Croatia, the state-run company that is responsible for Croatia’s first LNG facility on the island of Krk, informed interested companies that the deadline for closing the Open Season second round is being prolonged, until 28th of September 2018. the deadline for closing the second round of the Open Season procedure was 3rd of August 2018.
The European Council extended the mandate of EU NAVFOR Somalia Operation Atalanta until 31 December 2020. It also decided to relocate the EU NAVFOR Operational Headquarters from Northwood, UK to Rota, Spain, and to Brest France for the Maritime Security Centre Horn of Africa MSCHOA as of 29 March 2019.
The European Council added six entities to the list of those subject to restrictive measures over actions undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine. The six companies are involved in the construction of the Kerch Bridge, connecting Russia to the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula.
On the sidelines of the Second Energy Interconnections summit on 27 July, European leaders signed the Lisbon Declaration, aiming to strengthen regional cooperation in the framework of the Energy Union and better integrate the Iberian Peninsula into the internal energy market.
The European Commission has approved a French project promoting electricity generation from tidal energy, which was found to be in line with EU State aid rules, while it is expected to contribute further the EU’s energy and climate goals without distorting competition in the Single Market.
The EU along with the US announced that they reached an agreement toward zero tariffs. This came after the visit of the European Commission’s President, Jean-Claude Juncker in the US, where he and US President, Donald Trump agreed for zero tariffs on industrial goods.
Europe added 4.5 GW of wind energy capacity in the first half of 2018, according to a report by WindEurope. The figure is down on the same period last year (6.1 GW) though is in line with expectations. The 1.1 GW of offshore wind was mainly in the UK (911 MW), Belgium (175 MW) and Denmark (28 MW).
