| May 4th, 2026 | News

Recommendations to Curb Marine Pollution in European Seas

In its Zero Pollution Action Plan the EU sets out a long-term vision to achieve a pollution-free environment by 2030 and a healthy planet for all by 2050. The plan aims to curb pollution across three areas of action: air, water, and soils. To support these efforts, a team of scientists coordinated by the Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS) at GFZ has developed a framework for reducing and preventing pollution in European regional seas by 2030.

The Zero Pollution Action Plan is part of the European Green Deal , the comprehensive sustainability strategy adopted by the EU in 2019. In 2025, the EU stepped up its commitment and adopted the European Ocean Pact. The challenges are considerable, as marine pollution remains widespread and concentrations of individual contaminant levels frequently exceed agreed thresholds.

Tackling pollution – from source to sea

Scientists from the research project Source to Seas – Zero Pollution 2030 (SOS-ZEROPOL2030) have developed a Strategic Zero Pollution Framework to help guide action towards achieving zero pollution in European seas by 2030. The framework is targeted towards European decision- and policymakers, industry representatives and stakeholders, as well as civil society actors. It outlines the key objectives and measures necessary to reduce and, where possible, prevent pollution in European seas.

The framework’s recommendations focus on four priority pollutant groups: nutrients, hazardous substances, microplastics and underwater noise. These four pollutant groups arise from widespread activities across multiple sectors, including shipping, agriculture and industry, and are difficult to attribute to individual sources. According to the researchers, their regulation requires a comprehensive ‘source-to-sea’ approach that takes into account the complexity of the four groups, with their different sources, properties, impacts and pathways, and facilitates the targeted design of policy measures and engagement with stakeholders.

Numerous stakeholders involved

The objectives, targets, measures and broad timelines proposed in the Strategic Framework were developed in a comprehensive process involving numerous stakeholders. The Zero Pollution Parliament, a real-world laboratory held in Brussels in November 2025, as well as earlier Regional Seas Living Labs, played a pioneering role in this. The involvement of various stakeholders is also central to the framework’s recommendations, which aim to improve data collection and analysis, to implement measures to reduce, prevent, contain and monitor marine pollution, and to set targets for marine pollution management.

While the EU has placed the prevention and reduction of marine pollution at the forefront of its environmental agenda, the researchers argue that further coordinated action is needed to ensure healthy and productive marine ecosystems. They therefore propose critical building blocks to achieve progress towards the Zero Pollution vision, and provide guidance on essential next steps to achieve this vision for the four priority pollutants.