Monitoring of the EU Mission “Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030”

EU Mission Oceans and Water

The EU Mission ‘Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030’ (Restore our Ocean and Waters) aims to protect and restore marine and freshwater ecosystems while addressing the increasing pressure on aquatic resources through research and innovation, citizen engagement and blue investments (EC, 2021a).

The Mission is part of a broader effort including a total of five EU Missions (EU Missions in Horizon Europe): Adaptation to Climate Change, Cancer, 100 Climate Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030, A Soil Deal for Europe. Mission-based public policy is novel approach to tackle society challenges pioneered by Horizon Europe, the EU’s funding program for research and innovation for the years 2021-2027. This approach involved setting ambitious and specific yet attainable goals and directing public and private resources, research and innovation efforts, and public engagement towards meeting them with a specified timeframe (EC, 2023a).

The Mission ‘Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030’ has set up Mission “lighthouses” (Mission Lighthouses) across four major European sea and river basins: Atlantic and Artic basin, the Baltic and North Sea basin, the Mediterranean Sea basin, and the Danube River basin. Lighthouses shall act as hubs and platforms for the development and deployment of transformative innovations of all forms – technological, social, business, governance – and integrate existing knowledge outputs and new knowledge, ensuring local business participation and citizen engagement and outreach (EC, 2021a).

The Mission has funded 67 projects for about EUR 374 million under Horizon Europe 2021-2023 Work Programmes. (Figure 1). Projects are either operating under a Basin Lighthouse perspective or cross-cutting. They were selected and implemented through calls for proposals following the Horizon Europe principles of R&I excellence, competition, and impact-driven research and innovation. These projects are expected to pilot, demonstrate and deploy at scale ground-breaking research and innovation solutions while supporting their replication across Europe.

Figure 1: overview of Horizon Europe projects funded under the Mission Ocean and Waters work programmes
2021-23 and their correlation to the objectives of the Mission

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The Missions has also focused at stimulating broad public mobilisation and enhancing citizen and stakeholder engagement through specific enabling actions, addressing different segment of the society, (e.g.: young people, consumers, artists etc.) and supporting citizen-science initiatives as well as deliberative democracy, social innovation awareness campaigns (EC, 2021a; EC, 2023a).

The Digital Twin of the Ocean, the pillar of the Mission knowledge system, shall provide readily available knowledge and monitoring services to citizens, entrepreneurs, scientists, and policymakers, thus allowing predictions and informed decisions.

Mission’s objectives and targets

The Mission objectives were designed to address European Green Deal (EC, 2019) targets for biodiversity, zero pollution and decarbonisation to help addressing the three principal drivers of environmental degradation. This is a new approach where research activities are mobilized to contribute to and accelerate the achievement of broad policy targets. The vision is that these activities can provide an innovation push that enables a better implementation of existing regulations, including a better monitoring of their implementation (EC, 2021a).

The Mission shall thus be measured against selected targets of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 (EC, 2020), EU Action Plan Towards Zero Pollution for Air, Water and Soil (EC, 2021b) and the European Climate Law (European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, 2021a). These targets can be summarized in ten targets under three Mission specific objectives as illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Overview objectives and their targets of the Mission Oceans and Water

While delivering on these objectives and targets, the Mission is expected to contribute to the implementation of existing EU legislation, notably of the Common Fisheries Policy (EC, 2023b), the Common Agricultural Policy (European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, 2021b), the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, 2008), the Water Framework Directive (European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, 2000), and the Nature Restauration Regulation (European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, 2024). Thus, their implementation progress and the achievement of their quantifiable targets will provide a measure for the success of the Mission. Moreover, the Mission is expected to contribute to upcoming reviews of relevant policies and in the development of new ones (EC, 2021a).

This highlights that the Mission shall support and contribute towards the achievement of a broad range of EU policies. In addition, the Mission can help to identify synergies and trade-offs across the EU policies.

Monitoring framework

This policy brief introduces a monitoring framework that is being developed to quantify the impact of projects and activities supported by the Mission towards reaching objectives and targets of relevant EU policies. This will apply indicators which are representative of the selected targets as well as consistent with EU policies and their existing monitoring frameworks. A draft list of the Mission specific indicators is presented in Table 1.

The monitoring framework includes both qualitative and quantitative assessment of the impact of the projects for each indicator. Indicators are populated with information on the expected outcomes of projects, as described in their technical annexes submitted during proposal phase. When available, existing indicators on the status of environment published by the EEA will be used as a baseline to inform the assessment on the contribution of mission’s projects.

An example of an indicator fact sheet for Marine protected areas is shown below. All other indicators will be published as part of the first Monitoring Assessment Report in May 2025 and they will be updated regularly to track progress during the lifespan of the Mission. The assessment as well as all other relevant publications of this monitoring framework will be made available through a dedicated Science-Policy Interface for the EU Mission Oceans and Water in WISE Marine (WISE Marine).

Assessing the impact of Mission’s projects

The following section provides a first insight on the assessment being prepared for the First Monitoring Assessment. Since most of the funded projects are ongoing, the expected outcome of these 67 projects directly funded and managed by the Mission in 2021-2023 have thus been analysed. Figure 3 shows the cumulative distribution of the Mission’s projects funding whose outcomes are expected to have a quantifiable impact towards reaching specific objectives and targets. The contribution is displayed using the committed funds by the Mission and accounts for the cumulative contribution of projects across several targets: thus, the displayed total sum of funding is higher that the Mission budget. This highlights that the Mission has so far supported projects addressing the entire spectrum of targets assigned to the Mission, as described in the previous chapter.

Figure 3: Bar chart showing the distribution of funding provided by the Mission Oceans and Water
in relation to its objectives and targets

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Regional distribution of activities is an important aspect when assessing the impact of Mission’s activities on policies’ targets and objectives that shall be met at EU level. 838 project participants from all EU Member States, 14 Associated Countries and 3 non-Associated third Countries are involved in the development and implementation of these 67 projects. Innovation solutions and new technologies are expected to be tested on a broad network of more than 300 demo sites across EU Member States and Associated Countries for demonstration and real-time testing (see Map 1). In addition to demo sites, projects are planning to further demonstrate and replicate solutions in more than 130 sites through the Associated regions scheme. This scheme helps to raise awareness and boost capacity development in less-developed areas and/or allow to demonstrate solutions in similar or complementary conditions to the one experienced in demo sites. Thus, activities conducted in projects are expected to cover a broad range of geographies while fostering collaboration across several regions and sea basins.

It is important to highlight that EU policies’ objectives and targets, against which the Mission is assessed, are broader than the scope of the Mission and their achievement cannot stand on the Mission funding and projects alone. As detailed by EC (2021a), the Mission activities are “expected to provide an innovation push through technologies development, test of best practices, and knowledge sharing that enables a better implementation of EU regulations”.

In addition to activities directly funded by the Mission, several EU, national, and regional programs and a wide range of stakeholders are working towards addressing common objectives and targets as demonstrate by the about 800 actions pledged under the Mission’s Charter (Mission Charter). By endorsing the Charter, Member States, regions, local authorities, international partners and stakeholders are expressing political support and real engagement, taking concrete measures and mobilising bottom-up actions and resources. This indicates that there is a broad range of support and efforts towards addressing the Mission’s objectives and targets beyond projects directly funded by the Mission budget. Pledges under the Mission’s Charter will however not be included as part of the assessment conducted for the First monitoring assessment report.