I will be speaking this morning with two hats.
The first is the one our moderator just mentioned, as Chair of the Starfish Mission
Board.
The second is as co-chair, together with Tiago Cunha from the Azul Foundation and Geneviève Pons, who leads the Jacques Delors Institute in Brussels, of the
stakeholder group which has been the political driving force behind the mission
forward for some time.
This group will unveil later this afternoon a new blueprint for a Transformative Ocean Act, and I see Commissioner Kadis smiling because he knows exactly what we mean by that.
I will devote these few minutes first to looking back at the mission and then to looking forward.
Looking back at the work done and our achievements during the last five years, the key question is what results we have achieved?. By results, I mean changes that would not have happened without the mission, or at least would have happened in a much more modest way. I see two domains where the impact of the mission is obvious.
First, the mission has been instrumental in helping to raise the ocean higher on the
European Union agenda, as well as on the international agenda. The Ocean Pact
initiative and the new European Ocean agenda, including observation with the digital twin initiative, to take two examples, are clear evidence of that.
Second, I believe we have succeeded in engineering a totally unprecedented
mobilisation of Ocean and hydrosphere stakeholders across the European Union in a decentralized way. To my knowledge, this is a first. I am now a very old monkey. I have been following, and often participating in, what has happened in the European Union for many years. This is the first time that we have broken new ground in EU governance by creating political energy from the ground up, setting up a series of local and regional ecosystems designed to nurture a wide range of solutions in the directions of the Starfish legs that Commissioner Kadis
just mentioned and which I will not repeat.
Of course, compared to where we were five years ago, there is now one additional
dimension that was not present at that time. That dimension is geopolitical. One only has to look at what is happening today in the Ormuz strait, or in the Mediterranean, or in the Black sea or in the Baltic sea to understand why the geostrategic dimension of an Ocean Union is now coming big way to the forefront.
Let me now turn to the future. I see three major challenges that the mission as well
as you, all our stakeholders, will have to address in the years ahead.
The first challenge is to transform a myriad of relatively small scale solutions into
perhaps a hundred large scale solutions capable of delivering a properly functioning Ocean Union. For this to happen, we will need stronger political attention at the level of our 27 member states. When I look at the level of political energy that we have mobilised so far, I would say that we are strong at the grassroots level and strong at the top. Here I should pay tribute here to the very strong engagement from the beginning by the President of the European Commission, by the President of the European Council, and by the Searica group in the European Parliament in advocating and pushing this endeavour forward.
However, we have a problem in the middle. Very few national political leaders are
seriously engaged in what needs to be done. Yet a large part of what must be
achieved will have to be implemented at member state level. This is therefore the first issue we need to focus on.
The second challenge, returning to our discussion with Commissioner Kadis, is to
ensure that the Commission proposal for the Ocean Act is at the same level of
ambition as the Ocean Pact. This is not guaranteed. We have to be very frank about this. There is a risk that the level of ambition could decrease between the Pact and the Act. This is a crucial issue because what ultimately matters is not what the Commission proposes, but what the European Parliament and the Council decide. Maintaining the level of ambition from the very beginning will therefore be essential.
The third and final challenge concerns the financial trajectory after 2028 for European Union missions, starting with what will happen to the European research and innovation programme. So far this programme has been the main source of the 620 million euros that have been invested in Starfish, which are EU funds but which have leveraged probably five to eight times that amount from other sources, including private investment.
We all know that the negotiations on the next Multiannual Financial Framework will
be extremely difficult. They will involve very intense political competition. Given the very long list of priorities the European Union will face after 2028, this will be a tough battle. We must begin preparing for it now.
This takes me back to the need to increase visibility, awareness and engagement
among EU member states, because the ministers from those countries will ultimately sit in the Council when decisions on the MFF are taken.
In conclusion, I would say that the achievements so far are quite impressive. If
someone had told me five years ago that we would reach this point today, I would
have been very satisfied. At the same time, we clearly face serious challenges
ahead. I believe we already have some of the political energy needed to address and overcome these challenges, and that is what we must continue building upon. When I refer to the mission, which can sometimes sound like an abstract concept, I am referring above all to the people working for and with us. That includes colleagues inside the European Commission, my fellow board members whom I would like to thank for their commitment, and the large number of people on the ground, professionals, NGOs, academics, think tanks and local authorities, some of which in this room, for whom the mission has become a new lighthouse.
Many thanks for your attention.
