The parties to the Bonn Agreement, as last amended in 2021, are the governments of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, as well as the European Union. In 2019, the BONN Agreement celebrated 50 years of continuous cooperation in the fight against marine pollution in Europe. This makes the Bonn Agreement the world`s oldest regional agreement by governments for joint management and response to pollution incidents. 1. The Parties shall make arrangements for the exercise of secretariat functions related to this Agreement, taking into account existing arrangements under other international agreements for the prevention of the marine environment applicable to the same region as this Agreement. Building on an earlier agreement signed in 1969 that covered crude oil pollution, the 1984 Bonn Convention also covered the discharge of other pollutants that pollute or threaten to pollute the sea in the North Sea region. The Bonn Convention on Cooperation in Combating Pollution of the North Sea by Oil and Other Pollutants is the mechanism through which Parties cooperate to assist each other in combating pollution in the Greater North Sea and its approaches to maritime disasters and chronic pollution of ships and offshore installations. It carries out surveillance as a tool for detecting and combating marine pollution. This is the oldest regional agreement signed by governments to respond to pollution incidents.
The Contracting Parties are Belgium, Denmark, the European Union, Germany, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Bonn Agreement covers the Greater North Sea and its approaches. This area of about 1.5 million km2 includes the current North Sea, the Skagerrak, the English Channel and its accesses, as well as other waters, including the Irish Sea, the Celtic Sea, the Malignant Sea, the Great Minch, the Little Minon, part of the Norwegian Sea and parts of the North-East Atlantic. Once the decision to accede to Spain enters into force, Spain will be admitted as a contracting party and the geographical scope of the Bonn Agreement will extend to the Bay of Biscay, which will extend to approximately 1.9 million km2, see Figure 1. The 1984 Bonn Agreement entered into force on 28 June 1984. These decisions and other practical information are in www.bonnagreement.org/publications Operational discharges from maritime transport are one of the main sources of oil pollution in the Greater North Sea and its approaches. That is why the Bonn Convention was amended in 1989 to include in its remit the obligation to carry out aerial surveillance flights in order to detect pollution on the ground and even to detect polluters. The Aerial Surveillance Manual provides aerial surveillance teams with detailed information on how to conduct surveillance in the Bonn Agreement area.
The signatory countries of the Bonn Agreement cooperate on various technical issues through the OTSOPA working group. Topics include air monitoring sensors, dispersants, oil extraction, risk analysis, oil pollution modelling, equipment for use in rough seas, environmental advisory systems, development of decision support tools, wildlife response, lessons learned from past spill incidents, etc. The OTSOPA Working Group meets once a year to exchange best practices, discuss pollution trends and new maritime developments, exchange information on new projects, equipment or instruments, and agree and evaluate a joint work programme. Some of the main activities coordinated by OTSOPA are explained in more detail below. Ministers and high-level delegates attended meetings on very important decisions of the Bonn Agreement. Six conferences on the North Sea have been held since 1984, a year after the original 1969 Convention was replaced by the new Bonn Convention (1983), which covered other pollutants in addition to oil. The first ministerial meeting took place in Dublin (Ireland) in 2010 and the second in Bonn (Germany) in 2019, where the Bonn Declaration of 11 October was adopted, which renewed the vision of the agreement. The Parties shall implement the Agreement by: The European Union actively supports the signatory countries to the Bonn Convention and their activities in the fields of pollution prevention, preparedness and response, mainly through the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (`the Union Mechanism`) and the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). The Union Mechanism shall strengthen cooperation between the EU and the participating States and facilitate coordination, including through its Emergency Response Coordination Centre, in order to improve the effectiveness of emergency response. The European Commission (DG ECHO4) is a driving force in promoting further research and development by co-financing projects related to key R&D priorities in the field of marine pollution.
The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) supports the signatory countries of the Bonn Agreement with complementary operational services such as a satellite oil pollution monitoring and surveillance service (CleanSeaNet), a network of ships prepared to combat oil spills throughout Europe for offshore oil extraction and pollution equipment stocks, and a Chemical-Specific Information Service (HNS) (MAR-ICE network). EMSA also offers the training of experts and plays a coordinating role between regional agreements covering the 4 maritime regions of Europe through the annual “Inter-Secretariat Meetings”. Both amendments are extrajudicial and supported by all Parties, including all Member States that are Parties to the Convention. The modification of the scope of an international agreement should normally be regarded as a substantive modification which therefore requires the application of the procedure for its conclusion, that is to say. . . .
