Regional Conventions

Regional oiled wildlife response planning is under development within the regional conventions for protection of European seas from pollution, notably within HELCOM Response for the Baltic Sea and the Bonn Agreement for the North Sea. These regional activities provide a stronger policy framework for European countries to develop and strengthen their arrangements for dealing with oiled wildlife incidents.

Click on the map to learn more about the setup of each of the regional sea conventions

Lisbon Agreement

Location: North-east Atlantic

The Lisbon Agreement relates to the protection of the coasts and waters of the north-east Atlantic against pollution from the southern Channel to the Moroccan coasts. The Lisbon Agreement,  as contracted between Spain, Portugal, Morocco and France was drafted in 1993 and came into force on 1st Feburary 2014. The agreement provides potential protection for…

Bucharest Convention

Location: Black Sea

The Convention on the Protection of the Black Sea against Pollution (the Bucharest Convention) was adopted in 1992 and entered into force in 1994. The contracting parties to the Convention are Bulgaria, Romania, Russian Federation, Georgia, Turkey and Ukraine. The Bucharest Convention has a Protocol on Cooperation in combating pollution of the Black Sea Marine…

Bonn Agreement

Location: North Sea

The Agreement for cooperation in dealing with pollution of the North Sea by oil and other harmful substances (the Bonn Agreement) was signed in Bonn, Germany on 9 June 1969. It is the mechanism by which the North Sea States and the European Community (the Contracting Parties) work together to: help each other in combating…

Copenhagen Agreement

Location: Baltic Sea

The Copenhagen Agreement is an agreement between Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden that relates to the response to oil and chemical discharges in the Baltic Sea and Kattegatt. The contracting parties to the Copenhagen Agreement have agreed to co-operate with one another in surveillance, investigations and reporting, with the view to protecting the marine…

Barcelona Convention

Location: Mediterranean Sea

Under the Barcelona Convention, countries bordering the Mediterranean cooperate together on the environmental protection of the Mediterranean Sea. All twenty-one Mediterranean coastal States and the European Communities are Contracting Parties to the Barcelona Convention. One of the protocols to the Barcelona Convention is the 2002 Protocol Concerning Cooperation in Preventing Pollution from Ships and, in…

Helsinki Commission

Location: Baltic Sea

The Helsinki Commission, or HELCOM, is the governing body of the ‘Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area’ – more commonly known as the Helsinki Convention. HELCOM works to protect the marine environment of the Baltic Sea from all sources of pollution through intergovernmental co-operation between the Baltic Countries.…

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