CEMP Appendices Background

In 2014 OSPAR revised its CEMP Appendices to align with the European Commission’s (EC) MSFD Art.11 monitoring programmes reporting tables, to assist Contracting Parties that are member states in their MSFD reporting commitments.

During OSPAR 2019 the European Commission (EC) informed OSPAR of WG DIKE (Working Group on Data Information and Knowledge Exchange) work to revise and develop the Art.11 reporting format. OSPAR agreed the Secretariat would look at whether and how OSPAR’s CEMP Appendices could be adapted to match the EC’s reporting format to facilitate the process. The Secretariat worked with Expert Groups, Intersessional Correspondance Groups and Committees to revise the existing CEMP appendix structure (Figure 1) to align with the revised MSFD Art.11 reporting format.

Aligning the appendices involved populating spreadsheets (Figure 2) by transferring information from the CEMP appendices and then validating the information in line with the guidance within the spreadsheet (column G) and using the EC  Enumeration tables.

The appendices will be reviewed and revised each year and made available through OAP, making use of the built-in versioning control system so Contracting Parties can refer to a specific version of the tables during national consultation.