The sustainable management of aquatic ecosystems requires better coordination between policies span-ning freshwater, coastal and marine environments. Ecosystem-based management (EBM) has been promoted as a holistic and integrative approach for the safekeeping and protection of aquatic biodiversity. The paper assesses the degree to which key European environmental policies for the aquatic environment, namely the Birds and Habitats Directives, Water Framework Directive and Marine Strategy Framework Directive, individually support EBM and can work synergistically to implement EBM. This assessment is based on a review of legal texts, EU guidance and implementation documents. The paper concludes that EBM can be made operational by implementing these key environmental directives. Opportunities for improving the integration of EU environmental policies are highlighted.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13280-017-0928-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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While some progress has been made, Europe is far from achieving its policy objective of healthy aquatic ecosystems. This paper presents an integrated assessment of how EU policies influence aquatic biodiversity, in order to determine how EU policies and laws contribute to achieving and/or hindering EU and international biodiversity targets. The paper also discusses whether European policy has a synergistic or conflicting mix of instruments to address the main problems facing aquatic biodiversity, and whether gaps in the existing policy framework exist. The integrated policy review assessment presented in this paper is based on the application of the drivers-pressures-state-impact-responses (DPSIR) framework to six known pressures on aquatic biodiversity, selected to provide a representative range: nitrogen pollution, species extraction, invasive alien species, water abstraction, alterations to morphology, and plastic waste. The DPSIR framework is used to characterize these pressures and how they are influenced by underpinning socio-economic drivers and major European policies. The conclusions highlight that the policy framework is most developed when it comes to defining environmental targets and sets a number of instruments to reduce pressures by encouraging the adoption of more resourceefficient practices, but it becomes less specific when tackling sectors (drivers) and supporting more environmental sound economic development.

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