MPA assessment areas

The spatial extent of the MPA assessment areas was defined as the marine waters surrounding the EU countries whose outer limit is defined by the 200 NM boundary from the coast (possibly coinciding with formally recognised EEZ boundaries) or the equidistance (in cases of opposite neighbouring EU countries), or by the presence of a boundary defined by an agreed treaty. However, since no formal boundary of this map exists and since this limit coincides with the boundary of the maritime area (water column) submitted by EU Member States under MSFD Articles 8, 9 and 10 in the Eionet Central Data Repository (CDR) ), the decision was taken to use the MSFD Region/Subregion boundary shapefile assembled in 2013 by ETC/ICM (ETC/ICM, 2013), based on EU Member States reported data integrated with information from the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) Maritime Boundaries (version 7) to delimit the MPA assessment areas