Political Declaration on energy cooperation  between the North Seas Countries - Support Group 1 on Maritime Spatial Planning  

Under the Political Declaration on energy cooperation between the North Seas countries, Maritime spatial planning has been identified as one of four work areas. For the  work programme 2016 – 2019 participating countries will work on:

• Coordinating the planning and development of offshore wind and grid projects beyond national borders including area mapping;
• Developing a common environmental assessment framework;
• Increasing the availability and interoperability of marine data for planning, impact assessment, licensing and operations;
• Exchanging best practices on site preparation and the handling of unexploded ordnance;
• Exchanging best practices on permitting procedures and work on the modalities of a coordinated permitting process for concrete regional or sub-regional joint offshore projects.

The participating North Seas Countries (BE, DK, FR, DE, IR, NL and NO) agreed that the highest priorities for the first two years are the first three bullet points. The other mentioned topics will become more relevant in a later stage.