©Anais Dyckmans
Following the success of its first edition, the European Commission organised the 2nd European Maritime Spatial Planning Week from 1 to 5 June 2026 in Brussels (Belgium), hosting a week-long series of events dedicated to Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP). This MSP-focused week brought together key events and expert groups to foster exchange, build synergies, and accelerate progress on MSP across Europe and beyond.
As part of the week, and in the framework of the Northern European Sea Basins project (NESBp), EMODnet hosted a workshop on the fit-for-use of EMODnet for MSP on Tuesday 2 June 2026, bringing together MSP practitioners and stakeholders to contribute to discussions on EMODnet’s leading EU offer for MSP, hosting diverse marine environmental and human activities data and National MSP plans, and EMODnet's fitness-for-use for future MSP, together with policy recommendations for the MSP Directive revision.. The workshop brought together MSP practitioners and stakeholders from around the world to contribute to discussions on the EMODnet marine data services for MSP and EMODnet policy recommendations for the MSP Directive revision.
Over 70 interested registered for the workshop, and a total of 39 participants attended the in-person workshop in Brussels. Nathalie Tonné from Seascape Belgium / the EMODnet Secretariat formally welcomed the participants and introduced them to the NESB project and EMODnet’s role in it. The aim of the workshop was to both inform MSP stakeholders about EMODnet’s current data offer, and gathering feedback on how its data and services are experienced in practice. It was also presented how EDITO builds on EMODnet, alongside Copernicus Marine, being a cloud-based digital environment allowing to do analytical work and modelling based on EMODnet (and Copernicus) data. Alessandro Pititto, head of EMODnet Human Activities, then presented the EMODnet MSP dataset based on the national MSP plans from Member States, how it was developed based on the EMODnet MSP data model and explained the rationale for its development. This was followed by a presentation providing insights into the results of a NESBp study quantifying the EMODnet offer for MSP, and key outcomes from a stakeholder survey, led by Merel De Cock from Seascape Belgium.
©Anais Dyckmans
The open-floor discussions covered debates on and suggestions for optimising the EMODnet Map Viewer and Metadata Catalogue for MSP. For example, there was an extended debate about how EMODnet could help users (better) identify EMODnet datasets relevant for MSP such as metadata tagging/labeling. Participants recognised the value of improving discoverability, but at the same time warned that deciding what counts as “MSP-relevant” is difficult, because relevance depends heavily on context, scale and planning questions. There were also suggestions for a sronger navigation from the EMODnet Portal to other MSP-relevant portals such as Eurostat hosting socio-economic data.
The final session on policy recommendations for MSP Directive review, led by Joseph Nolan from Seascape Belgium, included a discussion on whether there should be stronger obligations for publishing MSP plans in geospatial format and what role EMODnet should have in a revised MSP Directive. Open-floor discussions suggested that EMODnet’s role in any revised framework should remain grounded in its mandate as a marine data service, rather than expanding into the interpretation of plans or wider policy explanation.
At the exhibition booth, interest was high in EMODnet’s marine data services and in the European Atlas of the Seas, which continues to resonate with visitors well beyond the data community.
Couldn’t make it to the workshop? Feedback is still welcome via the short survey (open until 30 June 2026).
Watch the short video for highlights from European MSP Week and insights into the value of EMODnet for the MSP community:
A detailed workshop report summarising the discussions and outcomes of the stakeholder survey, will be developed and published in the coming months.