EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region Priority Area 9 meeting

“Although conditions vary greatly across the Baltic Sea countries and sub-regions, we believe that it is possible to develop common measures through exchange of experiences and learning from one another. One way to do this is to establish a network of national RDP focal points around the Baltic Sea Region. The time to do this is right now, as the responsible ministries are preparing the proposals for the next program period”, said Ms. Tiina Malm. 

The conclusions from the workshop highlighted three important issues: 1) the role of qualified agri-environment advisory services, 2) the need for collective measures on the river basin level in addition to farm level measures, 3) the need to focus programme resources and advice in the high risk agricultural areas in order to achieve the environmental objectives with better cost-efficiency and 4) the need of agri-environmental innovations and the importance to distribute them and put them in practice. 

Baltic COMPASS sees the processes and recent actions taken within the EU BSR Strategy as steps in the right direction to better align the agri-environment management to facilitate win-win solutions for both agriculture and environment. 

The EU BSR Strategy had, in its Annual Report in June, established the cluster of agro-environmental projects, consisting of Baltic DEAL, Baltic MANURE and Baltic COMPASS. This cooperation is already on the way, as came up in the presentation by Paula Biveson from Baltic COMPASS.

The cluster of agro-environment projects is well positioned also to service the process of developing common measures with its specific contributions on environmental assessment, technical solutions and recognition of the farm level conditions and prerequisite for implementation of the measures

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Baltic DEAL and Baltic COMPASS have already cooperated