OCTA at the EU4Ocean Summit and the EU Maritime Day (19-20 May)

The European Maritime Day (EMD) is the biggest maritime stakeholders event in Europe, took place in Ravenna, Italy, on the 19-20 May. After 3 years of virtual and hybrid format due to the COVID pandemic, this year took place as a hybrid event, with the conferences being webstreamed live and recorded who were not be able to join the conference in Ravenna.

The main theme of this year’s European Maritime Day is ‘Sustainable blue economy for green recovery’. It was co-hosted by the Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius.

The EU presented a series of initiatives during the EMD:

• EU Blue Economy Observatory: Launched officially during the conference, it aims to bring together knowledge, data and scientific expertise on ocean-related socio-economic matters. It will significantly expand the analytical responsiveness and stakeholder outreach, serving as a collaborative knowledge dissemination platform to foster blue economy sectors in the EU.
• On the 18 May 2022, the 5^th edition of the European Commission’s report on Blue Economy was published. Read it here: Blue Economy Report 2022
• €2.5 Million call for proposals on “Women in the blue economy” – launched on 17 May 2022. For the first time, DG MARE has launched a call for proposals to promote and increase women’s participation in the blue economy.

The EU4Ocean Summit, a concluding event for the EU4Ocean pilot programme, celebrated the most successful initiatives, collaborations and actions of the EU4Ocean Platform, the Youth4Ocean Forum and the Network of European Blue Schools – the three main components of the EU4Ocean project, by gathering organisations, individuals, young people, schools and teachers that have been involved in the coalition. OCTA, as a new member of the EU4Ocean coalition, attended the event to bring the OCTs to the discussion table, promoting that the OCTs oceans are adequately included in ocean literacy actions.

The EU4Ocean Summit also featured a series of parallel thematic workshops:

• The cities we need for the ocean we want;
• Youth and Capacity building for Ocean Literacy – Connecting generations through storytelling;
• Citizens Empowerment through Ocean knowledge co-production;
• From individual to collective action: the role for sea basin initiatives to strengthen Ocean Literacy in Europe.

Would you like to watch a recorded session or a see the presentations?

All the sessions were organised in a hybrid format, therefore the recordings are available, in additions to the presentations. The recordings and the presentations have been linked to the session in the agenda.

To access the recordings or presentations, please click here: AGENDA EMD – select the session you are interested in and click on it so the description window opens on the right side of the screen. In this window, you can find the video of the session or the presentations, as they are uploaded. No registration necessary. If it does not work at first, try a different browser (such as google chrome).