Evaluating environmental policies creates opportunities for harmonising and refining their implementation using a heuristic approach, and considering the knowledge gaps in understanding the complex environmental processes. The European Union’s (EU) Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) is an ambitious legislation that brings together state, pressure, and impact Descriptors of the marine environment, and is built on an ecosystem-based approach to management. Ultimately, the Directive aims to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) and sustainable use of marine resources. The EU Member States’ (MS) reporting obligations for biodiversity monitoring were evaluated, to produce the first EU-wide overview of how monitoring programmes across EU waters are organised. Marine biodiversity monitoring is essential for the management of anthropogenic activities that affect the state of marine ecosystems, to support the understanding of complex marine systems, to determine GES, and to evaluate the effectiveness of the established measures. The EU MS put great effort into adapting their established biodiversity monitoring activities for the existing policy requirements, and to plan new monitoring programmes from the emerging needs of this ambitious policy. The monitoring reports provide a unique source of information, and this evaluation could lead to improve MS’ reporting, and harmonise implementation of the policy. Moreover, the evaluation provides a basis for sharing good practices, innovative monitoring standards, and developing joint monitoring programmes that could greatly facilitate the establishment of cost-efficient and accurate monitoring. As such, the recommendations from this policy evaluation could be relevant to any environmental management framework worldwide.

评估环境政策为利用启发式方法协调和完善其实施创造了机会，并考虑了在理解复杂环境过程中的知识差距。欧盟（EU）海洋战略框架指令（MSFD）是一项雄心勃勃的立法，将海洋环境的状态，压力和影响描述因素汇总在一起，并建立在基于生态系统的管理方法之上。最终，该指令旨在实现良好的环境状况（GES）和海洋资源的可持续利用。评估了欧盟成员国对生物多样性监测的报告义务，以就整个欧盟水域的监测计划的组织方式在欧盟范围内进行首次概述。海洋生物多样性监测对于管理影响海洋生态系统状况的人为活动，支持对复杂海洋系统的了解，确定GES以及评估既定措施的有效性至关重要。欧盟成员国做出了巨大的努力，以使其既定的生物多样性监测活动适应现有的政策要求，并根据这一雄心勃勃的政策的新需求计划新的监测计划。监控报告提供了独特的信息来源，该评估可以改善MS的报告，并协调该政策的实施。此外，评估为共享良好做法，创新的监控标准，制定联合监测计划，可以大大促进建立具有成本效益和准确的监测系统。因此，本政策评估的建议可能与全球任何环境管理框架有关。