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The European coast guard community is one of the major protagonists of the Green Deal – every day the coast guards and authorities deal with the greatest environment on earth – that of marine ecosystems and biodiversity and address the challenge of climate change. The Greening Award Initiative is meant to award those who have risen to the challenge and proposed greening activities in their daily mission, work, and campaigns.
The Greening Award Initiative aims to celebrate the sustainability actions that are carried out and developed across more than 300 authorities that make up the European Coast Guard community.
This initiative recognises projects and activities developed by authorities carrying out Coast Guard Functions which empower a green transition, contribute to a more sustainable future, and which directly or indirectly support the goals of the European Green Deal.
Announced in the framework of the Annual European Coast Guard Event held in Lisbon in 2023, the Greening Award Initiative is open to any entity or institution executing Coast Guard Functions within the European Union, Norway, and Iceland.
The Greening Award Initiative is jointly organised by the three European Agencies tasked with supporting national authorities carrying out Coast Guard Functions: the European Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA); the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA); and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex).
Award categories
The Greening Award Initiative has three different categories: Greening Operations; Outreach and Awareness; and Greening at Work.
Greening Operations: this category encompasses operational actions and projects that have led to an improved environmental footprint. Actions and projects that have engaged and involved communities internal and external to the submitting organisation are covered by this category, as are collaborative actions which may involve knowledge transfer inside or outside the organisation.
Outreach and awareness raising: this category showcases the public-facing activities that authorities engaged in Coast Guard Functions and have activated on sustainability themes. Public campaigns, open days, events, etc., are all covered by this category.
Greening at work: this category focuses on the practical application of sustainability in the workplace. It can include individual actions (for example, banning single use plastics, offsetting emissions) or larger-scale projects (for example, Eco-Management and Audit Scheme –EMAS registration for an organisation).
How to enter
Entries can be submitted through the Greening Award Initiative entry form before 31 March 2024. For more information on the Awards, the Rules, and the application process, please consult the Greening Award Initiative web page on the European Cooperation on Coast Guard Functions portal.
The Awards
The Awards will be presented at a special ceremony during the Annual European Coast Guard Event 2024, organised by the European Fisheries Control Agency.
7th Administrative Board meeting (13 March)
On 13 March the Administrative Board of the Community Fisheries Control Agency (CFCA) will hold its 7th meeting. Among the decisions to be taken are changes in the budget and the work programme to cater for the Joint Deployment Plan (JDP) for the recovery of blue fin tuna in the Eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea.
The blue fin tuna JDP is the main new initiative of the CFCA in 2008. It is a joint community project in which Member States, the Commission and the CFCA are working closely together. It will mainly concern Member States with a strong interest in the fishery: Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain. The JDP will organise and co-ordinate control, inspection and surveillance of the bluefin tuna fishery activities at sea and on land, using resources that have been pooled from the participating Member States. The JDP activities will be co-ordinated by a Technical Joint Deployment Group (TJDG), which will be set up in Brussels on 1 April 2008 and remain there until the end of the year.
The Administrative Board will also discuss options for the 2009 work programme of the Agency. The Executive Director has proposed to continue the joint deployment plans for North Sea cod, Baltic Sea cod, blue fin tuna and the joint inspection and surveillance activities adopted under the North-West Atlantic Fisheries Organisation (NAFO), with a possible extension to Western Waters and the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Convention area (NEAFC), which are important fishing areas where there is a need for organizing operational cooperation between Member States concerned. The CFCA should also coordinate control and inspection of imports and landings in Community ports of fishery products originating from IUU fishing activities, organise training for fisheries inspectors and start an evaluation of the effectiveness of the joint deployment plans.
All staff visit Vigo (14-18 March)
The Community Fisheries Control Agency (CFCA) is moving to its seat in the Vigo, Spain, in July 2008. As a preparation for the relocation, all staff of the new agency and their partners will visit Vigo 14-18 March. During this trip the staff will be received, inter alia, by the Xunta de Galicia and the City of Vigo.
Background (14 March)
The decision to establish an EU Fisheries Control Agency was taken under the 2002 reform of the Common Fisheries Policy to strengthen monitoring and control of EU fisheries measures and to help ensure that they are applied uniformly throughout the EU. The Agency will liaise with the stakeholder-led Regional Advisory Councils to secure input from the fisheries sector and other stakeholders, and to help promote a culture of compliance with EU conservation and management measures throughout the EU.
The core activity of the CFCA is operational coordination of pooled national means of control, inspection and surveillance.
The Agency currently has 28 staff members from 12 EU Member States. It will be fully staffed (49 staff members) by the end of 2008.
Among the achievements of the newly created agency are three major coordination tasks carried out in 2007:
- Coordination of EU control, inspection and surveillance activities in the regulatory area of the North Atlantic Fisheries Organisation (NAFO), a task that previously was ensured by the European Commission.
- A Joint Deployment Plan for cod stocks in the North Sea, which started in July 2007 and will continue in 2008. The plan is an innovative and coordinated effort to combat over-fishing and save endangered cod stocks in the North Sea. Resources (inspectors, control vessels, aircraft, etc) were pooled by seven Member States and were deployed where they were most needed, to ensure more effective and uniform control of fishing activities.
- Joint inspection and surveillance campaigns in relation to the long term management plan for cod in the Baltic Sea, which deploy resources that had been pooled by the coastal Member States. The campaigns will continue in 2008.
As part of the project PESCAO, two workshops organised by EFCA on the analysis and preliminary recommendations resulting from the Fisheries Committee for the Western Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC) and the Sub-regional Fisheries Commission (SRFC) Member Countries’ legal review were held on 22 and 23 May 2019 at SRFC headquarters in Dakar, Senegal.
The main objective of the workshops was to present the analysis and preliminary recommendations resulting from the FCWC and SRFC Member Countries’ legal review carried out by an external expert contracted by EFCA.
Officials from the FCWC and SRFC Member States, in addition to representatives of the FCWC and SRFC Secretariats, the European Commission, the European Union Delegation in Senegal and EFCA attended the workshop.
During the workshop it was provided an overview of the international, regional and sub-regional instruments applicable in the context of the fight against IUU fishing as well as an analysis of the relevant legislation of each country of the two sub-regional organizations.
The workshop also focused heavily on discussing the needs in terms of legal updating and/or implementation for each country, and a preliminary set of recommendations to address those needs.
Following the workshop, EFCA, in collaboration with its PESCAO partners – FCWC and SRFC - will support selected countries in drafting and amending national legislation
The third workshop of the European Coast Guard Functions Forum (ECGFF) on "Multipurpose Maritime Operations" (MMO) held in Catania, Sicily, Italy from 3 to 5 June, highlighted the coordination between the Italian Coast Guard, the Guardia di Finanza, and the cooperation with Italian Navy.
The workshop was organised with the support of the European Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA) and welcome around 90 delegates from 16 Member States and from the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), which are supporting national authorities carrying out Coast Guard functions with EFCA.
Since 2009, the European Forum of Coast Guard Functions voluntarily brings together several national organisations implementing Coast Guard functions in the European Union (EU), European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and Schengen area, with the aim of strengthening the so-called Coast Guard cooperation.
The event addressed the issue of complex multipurpose maritime operations, in which several Coast Guard functions are implemented simultaneously, in order to prepare effective and efficient responses to multiple challenges that may arise in a given area of operations. In these contexts, the coordinated participation of units belonging to the different Coast Guard organisations and to the three EU agencies is crucial.
The agenda of the first day's work included a plenary session and three working groups on the different aspects of this activity, with a particular focus on risk management, training, operational and logistical implications.
The concept of MMO was concretely tested on 4 June in the context of an exercise at sea called COASTEX19. Under the operational coordination of the Italian Coast Guard eleven naval assets, three aircrafts and three boarding teams created a complex scenario that simulated activities to combat illegal fishing, fight pollution, search and rescue operations and illegal trafficking.
The human resources and means of the Italian Coast Guard, Guardia di Finanza and Italian Navy, the three EU agencies as well as the Portuguese Navy, the German Federal Police and the Spanish Customs intervened in various moments of the exercise, cooperating with high standards of interoperability and synergy. The delegates participating in the workshop were able to attend as privileged observers all the operations directly from four of the ships engaged in Coastex19.
The workshop concluded today with the presentation of the exercise outcomes during the last preparatory meeting of the Plenary Conference of Heads of Coast Guard organisations to be held in Venice, Italy from 12 to 15 November 2019