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Division Introduction

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The core work of the Bonn Agreement is to cooperate regionally in preventing and combating marine pollution in the Greater North Sea from ships and offshore installations; to carry out surveillance as an aid to detecting and combating pollution at sea; cleaning up after maritime disasters and pollution offences. These are the achievements that come from 50 years’ scientific, technical and operational work of the Bonn Agreement. The Contracting Parties to the Bonn Agreement have cooperated to create great expertise in handling threats to the marine environment, and are ready to meet new challenges with the cooperation of Contracting Parties and engage with the international community.

The Bonn Agreement is the oldest regional agreement established by governments for responding to pollution incidents. The Agreement is the mechanism by which the North Sea States, and the European Union, work together to assist each other in combating pollution from maritime disasters and chronic pollution from ships and offshore installations in the North Sea Area. It was signed in 1969 by the eight states bordering the North Sea: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom, shortly after the oil tanker ‘Torrey Canyon’ broke up off Cornwall in 1967 spilling 117 000 tonnes of oil in the first major pollution disaster affecting Western Europe. However, the Bonn Agreement was not activated until the late 1970s after two other major pollution incidents had occurred: the ‘Ekofisk’ blow-out in 1977 and the ‘Amoco Cadiz’ in 1978. The Agreement has continued to function effectively ever since and was extended in 1983 to include other harmful substances and in 1987 to cover cooperation in surveillance. Further expansion took place in 2010 when Ireland joined and the Agreement was widened to cover Irish waters and related Norwegian and UK waters.

Despite the overall decrease in the number of accidental oil spills in European waters, major accidental oil spills (i.e. those greater than 20 000 tonnes) still occur at irregular intervals. Although land-based discharges constitute the largest source of oil that enters the ocean each year, accidental oil spills are still a major source of pollution accounting for about 10-15 per cent of all oil that enters the ocean world-wide every year.

The BASAP 2019-2025 is intended to facilitate the implementation of the Bonn Agreement in order to contribute to the prevention of marine pollution at large and meet future challenges, like the inevitable paradigm shift in energy and natural resources markets, the environmental challenges that were identified by the Paris Agreement 2015 and the pressure on marine spatial planning that can introduce other risks at sea. Given these developments and the spectacular decrease of accidental oil spills in European waters over the last 30 years, oil spill responders have to broaden their focus from oil to all kinds of marine pollution that can be measured and/or cleaned. A key new challenge for the Bonn Agreement, identified through the SWOT analysis, will be on air pollution that is affecting the ecosystems and the health of citizens in coastal areas, with high population density (MARPOL Annex VI).

The BASAP 2019-2025 is implemented by its Contracting Parties by:

  • keeping their zones of responsibility under surveillance for threats of marine pollution, pollution of the related air space over the sea, including coordinating aerial and satellite surveillance;

  • alerting each other to such threats;

  • adopting common operational approaches, so that they can rely on each other to achieve the necessary standards of prevention and clean-up;

  • adopting common and coordinated operational approaches for the compliance monitoring and enforcement of MARPOL Annex VI;

  • supporting each other (when asked to do so) in response operations;

  • sharing research and development as well as good practices; and

  • carrying out joint exercises.

  1. Vision