Sharing information for the maritime surveillance

What is this action about?

The objective of the global action is to establish a Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE) enabling enhanced awareness and knowledge of what is happening at sea, as an important contribution to efficiency in maritime operations and performance in all sectors within the EU maritime domain. This in turn will ultimately ensure safer, cleaner and more secure seas.

In line with the EU Digital Agenda, this translates into seamless, more structured and trusted cross-sector and cross-border information exchange between public administrations across seven policy areas (maritime safety and security, marine environmental protection, fisheries control, border control, law enforcement, customs and defence).

CISE seeks therefore to develop appropriate semantic, technical, organisational and legal solutions and recommendations to enhance the interoperability between existing systems of more than 400 maritime public authorities throughout the EU/EEA.

The cross-sector interoperability between maritime surveillance systems constitutes the major innovative aspect of the CISE. This would enable public authorities to retrieve and use information already gathered by authorities from other sectors, in order to substantially improve their awareness over the maritime area of responsibility.

What are the objectives?

The technological and functional definition of the CISE.

What are the benefits?

• Enhanced maritime situational awareness as key enabler of the overall safety, security and environmental protection of the EU maritime domain.
• Considerable cost savings for public administrations and enhancement of the effectiveness of the operational activities of the maritime authorities.
• Effective implementation and enforcement of the EU legislation in the fields of maritime safety and security, border control and fisheries control, customs and environment.
• Enhanced cooperation between EU agencies, national and regional maritime public authorities, allowing for an improved governance of the seas.
• Enhancement of competitiveness and demand for interoperable surveillance capabilities, opening up new market opportunities and job opportunities.

What has been achieved?
From April 2019, CISE has entered into the Transitional Phase to further support MS efforts to implement the CISE interoperability building blocks in their systems (considering those developed and tested in EUCISE2020 project), to maintain the CISE Network developed under the EUCISE2020 project and to prepare the definition of the future framework for the day-to-day operations in the CISE network and the interoperability solutions.

What are the next steps?

With the CISE Transitional Phase the Commission prepares the future Operational Phase of CISE and the sustainability plan after the end of ISA² programme. The Commission defined the following activities to be performed in this phase:

• Support the Member States in joining the CISE Network and in offering new data exchange services to other Public Authorities in Europe
• Involve the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) in the maintenance of the CISE Network and in the steering of the process along with the Member States
• Further develop and maintain the interoperability specifications of CISE (CISE data and service model)
• Maintain the CISE Common Components to ensure the security, scalability and maintainability required by the operational phase
• Prepare the future governance of CISE

From 2021 onwards, it is envisaged that the management and maintenance of the operational CISE will be completely transfered to EMSA and partially financed by the EMFF.