OSPAR Convention

[1] The Convention has been signed and ratified by all of the Contracting Parties to the original Oslo or Paris Conventions (Belgium, Denmark, the European Community, Finland,[3] France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) and by Luxembourg[4] and Switzerland.

[1] The first Ministerial Meeting of the OSPAR Commission at Sintra, Portugal, in 1998 adopted Annex V to the Convention, extending the cooperation of the signatory parties to cover "all human activities that might adversely affect the marine environment of the North East Atlantic".

The OSPAR convention now regulates European standards on marine biodiversity, eutrophication, the release of hazardous and radioactive substances into the seas, the offshore oil and gas industry and baseline monitoring of environmental conditions.

[1] According to the fr :Association pour le contrôle de la radioactivité dans l'Ouest, if tritium and iodine 129 discharges from the La Hague site into the Alderney Race do not diminish significantly, it will be difficult to achieve the objective of zero radioelement concentrations in the North Atlantic by 2020.

[5] In June 2007, OSPAR signatory parties agreed to amend the Convention in order to make mandatory the application of the treaty in the case of geological storage of CO2.