Four region sea convention are relevant for the European sea the helsinki convention for the baltic sea, the OSPAR convention for the north sea and the north east atlantic, the barcelona convention for the mediterranean sea and the bucharest convention for the black sea.
progress to become a platform for cooperation to implement the MSFD has, however, been limited in all four regional sea convention. one of the problems relates with processes of coordination of new rules and procedures within each convention, resulting in differences are matters of differences across marine region and their institutional settings, and relates to EU law not knoeing a formal shared responsibility for transboundary regions.