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Abstract The Marine Strategy Framework Directive, adopted by the EU, and several other initiatives to improve marine environmental management emphasize the need to integrate environmental and social analyses. This article proposes and tests a general Behavior-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (BPSIR) framework for identifying and structuring environmentally relevant social data. The framework is compatible with the widely applied Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework, but emphasizes actors and their behavior and defines 'impact' more specifically. In particular, it distinguishes between: (i) actors directly involved in activities causing physical, chemical, and biological disturbances, and (ii) actors who indirectly affect marine resource use and the pressures on marine ecosystems. Three case studies of chemical and biological disturbances in the Swedish parts of the North and Baltic seas demonstrate the need to balance current ecosystem monitoring with systematically collected and organized data on social factors, i.e., both direct and indirect actors and stakeholders, their adaptation to policy measures, and the role of general trends in consumption and production.

The deterioration of the marine environment has become evident all over the world and European waters are noexception. Therefore in the last few years the European Union has been engaged in an effort to develop a marinestrategy to protect the marine environment and a more encompassing integrated maritime policy that would provide acomprehensive system for the management of the uses of the marine areas of Europe. The EU Marine StrategyFramework Directive (2008/56/EG, MSFD) provides a regulatory framework for the management of the impacts of avariety of human activities on the EU's marine waters. The MSFD introduces the notion of "good environmental statusâ€ronment and constitutes a framework for the sustainable use of the marine environment in order to ensure its continueduse by current and future generations. The effective protection of the marine resource base is indeed a precondition forachieving sustainable wealth and generating employment, at a time when the EU is seeking to reinvigorate its economy.It will also enhance the quality of life in the European Union.

Marine and coastal ecosystems - and thus the benefits they create for humans - are subject to increasing pressures and competing usages. For this reason, the European Union (EU) adopted the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), which is to guide future maritime policy in the EU and aims at achieving or maintaining a good environmental status (GES) of the European seas by 2020. To this end, the MSFD requires the development of improvement measures, which have to be assessed inter alia by examining their cost-effectiveness and by carrying out cost-benefit analysis (CBA) before their implementation. In this paper, we investigate the applicability of environmental CBA in the marine context and identify and discuss problems that may hamper the environmental effectiveness of the MSFD. For example, marine ecosystem services are much less tangible than terrestrial ecosystem services. This implies greater challenges for the quantification of societal benefits in a marine context. One finding is that the limitations of environmental valuation methods regarding their ability to capture the whole total economic value of improvement measures are a potential source of problems, as the MSFD allows countries to disregard measures with disproportionately high costs. The trans-boundary nature of the main European seas adds to the complexity of the valuation task, e.g. due to the danger that benefits that occur outside of national territories are neglected. Moreover, the current state of knowledge on the functioning of complex marine ecosystems and the links to socio-economic impacts and human well-being seems insufficient to meet the MSFD requirements.

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive adopted in 2008 aims to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) of the EU's marine waters by 2020 and to protect the resource base upon which marinerelated economic and social activities depend. To that end each Member State is required to develop its Marine Strategy, keep it up-to-date and have it reviewed every 6 years. The Republic of Croatia has by mid-2019 not adopted its national strategic document. The paper analyses the chronology, content of EU official country reports on marine environment, possible obstacles in adoption procedure and presents proposal for more efficient approach to protecting the Adriatic Sea. Marine spatial planning is also considered key instrument for managing the conflicts resulting from the increasing utilization and industrialization of the world's seas and oceans. The process of national marine policy adoption should be made more clear and transparent to general public which is at the same time the public concerned, and to expert community. Strategic vision can only be built on knowledge, education and awareness of wider public.

The Marine Strategy Framework Directive adopted in 2008 aims to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) of the EU's marine waters by 2020 and to protect the resource base upon which marinerelated economic and social activities depend. To that end each Member State is required to develop its Marine Strategy, keep it up-to-date and have it reviewed every 6 years. The Republic of Croatia has by mid-2019 not adopted its national strategic document. The paper analyses the chronology, content of EU official country reports on marine environment, possible obstacles in adoption procedure and presents proposal for more efficient approach to protecting the Adriatic Sea. Marine spatial planning is also considered key instrument for managing the conflicts resulting from the increasing utilization and industrialization of the world's seas and oceans. The process of national marine policy adoption should be made more clear and transparent to general public which is at the same time the public concerned, and to expert community. Strategic vision can only be built on knowledge, education and awareness of wider public.

Background The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD; EC, 2008) is an ambitious European policy instrument that aims to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) in the 5,720,000 km2 of European seas by 2020, using an Ecosystem Approach. GES is to be assessed using 11 descriptors and up to 56 indicators (European Commission, 2010), and the goal is for clean, healthy and productive seas that are the basis for marine-based development, known as Blue-Growth. The MSFD is one of many policy instruments, such as the Water Framework Directive, the Common Fisheries Policy and the Habitats Directive that, together, should result in "Healthy Oceans and Productive Ecosystems – HOPE". Re- searchers working together with stakeholders such as the Member States environmental agencies, the European Environmental Agency, and the Regional Sea Conventions, are to provide the scientific knowledge basis for the implementation of the MSFD. This represents both a fascinating challenge and a stimulating opportunity.

The Marine Strategy Framework (Directive 2008/56/EC, MSFD) came into force in 2008, confirming the increased political interest in the oceans observed in recent years, and the change in the philosophy of environmental management, which has resulted in the development of many initiatives to guide the conservation, protection and sustainable management of marine ecosystems. This Directive is the key environmental instrument of the European Union (EU) maritime policy, and establishes that Member States shall adopt the necessary measures to achieve or maintain the Good Environmental Status (GES) of the marine environment by 2020. The central part of the MSFD is formed by the 'marine strategies', which have to be developed by the Member States for the marine waters under their jurisdiction. The implementation of the MSFD represents a demanding task in the integrative assessment of marine ecosystems. The first three steps of the implementation cycle of marine strategies (initial assessment, GES definition and establishment of environmental targets) concluded in 2012. The next task to be addressed in order to implement marine strategies is the elaboration of the monitoring programs (Article 11, MSFD). The general aim of these monitoring programs is the continuous assessment of the status of the marine environment, and will be used to estimate the distance between the environmental status and the GES, based on the elements listed in Annex III and following the principles contained in Annex V of the MSFD. Here we describe the implementation process, and we discuss the institutional framework and the main difficulties and challenges encountered so far, with emphasis on the Spanish context. ; Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC-UNESCO)