Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos presented before the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee (AFET) in Strasbourg yesterday (14 April 2014) the developments in the process of drafting an EU Maritime Security Strategy.

Minister Venizelos said, inter alia: “Our aim is for the EU Maritime Security Strategy to broaden the so far one-dimensional perspective of maritime security, which is now somehow military and police oriented, by including the following:

1. enhancing the economic growth and competitiveness of the European economies,
2. unhindered conduct of trade and transport by sea,
3. energy security,
4. port security,
5. security of the EU external borders,
6. securing biodiversity
7. a very crucial element, also according to the relevant Commission/EEAS Communication, into which the competent Commissioner, Maria Damanaki, has put enormous effort, is the promotion of the importance of full compliance with UNCLOS and of the potential for growth that maritime zones – such as the continental shelf and the Exclusive Economic Zone in the European Union and especially in the Mediterranean – hold.”

Read below the full speech of DPM & FM Venizelos.