No one can accuse the European Defence Agency's team of five retired admirals (the 'wise pens') of not knowing what they are talking about. The admirals, who jointly drafted recommendations for developing greater cooperation in maritime surveillance to support the EU's Common Foreign and Defence Policy, have clocked up over 200 years of naval experience between them. They have seen action off Lebanon and Sierra Leone, commanded ships in the Gulf and Balkan wars and served in the headquarters of NATO, the EU as well as the admiralties of Germany, France, Britain, Spain and Italy. Their message is clear: “Seaborne trade has doubled every decade since 1945 […] As trade has increased, so has the treat,” says the wise pens’ report, handed to EU defence ministers, on 26 April.

“The relative vulnerability of maritime transportation and sea borders represents a political hazard,” the report continues. ”The maritime world is lagging behind with no technological excuse and an increasing spectrum of risk.”

A run though the world’s newspaper headlines is enough to illustrate the range of today’s seaborne threats: a giant oil slick spreads through the Gulf of Mexico; pirates disrupt vital shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden; clandestine shipments of illegal immigrants head to Europe from North Africa and the Middle East; overfishing depletes stocks of ever more species; and terrorists sail to Bombay in a hijacked fishing boat and murder 173 people.

In the face of such dangers, European policy makers are increasingly concerned that the lack of communication and coordination among the patchwork of national forces and agencies charged with maritime security around Europe is leaving coastlines and maritime trade unnecessarily vulnerable. "Ships can still disappear of the horizon in a very sort of 19th-century piratical way, as long as people don't talk to each other," says Vice-Admiral Sir Anthony Dymock, formally of Britain's Royal Navy. "It makes the maritime world look quite amateurish."

Dymock was part of the 'wise pens' team tasked by the European Defence Agency in March to look at how the plethora of maritime authorities in the EU member states can overcome barriers among them in order to provide a more effective response to the growing range of seaborne security challenges. Their ideas on security and surveillance are designed to plug into the European Commission’s wider initiative to develop an integrated maritime policy for the EU. The admirals' recommendations were generally well received by the EU's defence ministers, who tasked High Representative Catherine Ashton to work with the Commission and member states to look at the options for the development of an EU security strategy for the maritime domain.

The principal problem identified in the admiral’s report is the lack of interconnection between the various military and civilian departments dealing with maritime affairs in the member states.

"Government departments are divided up in very functional, separate sectors and the problem with the maritime world is that it's massively interconnected,” Dymock explains. “If you live on land, you think the sea separates you from other countries, but if you work on the sea, you realise that the sea connects everything, it connects the good and the bad.”

As they looked into the problem, the admirals discovered that barriers to cooperation between the navies, coast guards, frontier guards, fisheries agencies and other maritime authorities within member states is often more pronounced than the lack of coordination among similar bodies in different countries. "One of the most important findings is that the barriers, the stove-piping, the difficulties to integrate are happening among sectors of interests, not actually between nations, not across borders," said Spanish Vice-Admiral Fernando del Pozo, a former director of NATO's International Military Staff. "Nations are cooperating among themselves, but only in specific sectors, the navy or police or fisheries or whatever. We found that it's between sectors where the problem lies," he explained during a 5 May meeting between the 'wise pens' and journalists at EDA’s headquarters in Brussels.

High among the admiral’s recommendations is the need for navies and civilian agencies to share real-time information on movement of ships and other vital details, which would enable them to have a clear picture of maritime traffic and potential threats in their area. The report stresses that agencies need to move away from a mentality, where information is only passed on if those holding it believe other agencies 'need to know'. Instead, the 'need to share' information should become more automatic. “One part of our ongoing work is to lobby for a ‘need to share’ mentality and not to stay with the ‘need to know’ - and to look at the consequences if you do not share,” said German Vice-Admiral Lutz Feldt, who chairs the team of 'wise pens’.

He suggested that disasters, such as the 2002 oil spill from the Greek-operated tanker Prestige off the coast of Northern Spain or the Erika disaster off Brittany in 1999, could have been handled better if authorities had shared information more quickly and freely.

European navies should overcome the traditional aversion to full participation of their ships and aircraft in the so-called Maritime Safety and Security Information System (MSSIS), which helps track maritime traffic around the world, unless there are valid operational reasons for keeping information about their warships and aircraft hidden, the team said. “Historically, state security used to be about secrets. Today, it’s the security of the citizen, rather than the state that will feature in more and more national security strategies,” says Dymock. “Security lies increasingly in transparency and not in hiding things.”

The European Maritime Safety Agency should also join up with the 60-odd nations who participate in the MSSIS, the admirals said. They contend that information exchanges can largely be based on existing systems, without the need for cash-strapped authorities to invest in significant new infrastructure.

"We've come up with a set of recommendations that show how we can become better integrated, more efficient and get best value for money using the assets we've got and the technology that's already in the pipeline," says Dymock.

Although much tracking of vessels is handled by so-called cooperative systems, whereby ships automatically report their position, speed and direction, the admirals recommend European authorities stepping up 'active surveillance' though land and satellite-based radar, cameras or infra-red systems at key areas, such as ports, straits and nuclear installations, to ensure monitoring of suspect vessels that seek to avoid requirements for automatic tracking – for either illegal or legitimate commercial reasons. For example, a Spanish fishing vessel hijacked by Somali pirates had its automatic tracking system turned off so as not to give away its position above a shoal of tuna to rival boats, Del Pozo recalls.

The report acknowledges that it is too early to talk about the creation of an EU-wide coast guard, but they suggest that coast guards of EU nations should adopt a common paint scheme and logo for their vessels to create an instantly recognisable identity. Nations should also engage in more common training and personnel exchanges among their coast guard services.

Among other suggestions, the admirals propose that the European Commission’s maritime affairs department DG MARE take on a greater role in establishing common definitions of concepts, such as maritime safety, security and surveillance, to avoid confusion and competition between agencies and call for the expansion of regular talks between the heads of navies and coast guards of EU member states. Increased monitoring and security should allow for the EU to strip away much of the red tape that currently bedevils shippers who, so far, do not benefit so much from the Schengen agreement in the same way as truck or aircraft drivers, who can move around Europe on a single set of customs and administrative documents.

"GRADUAL, REGIONAL EVOLUTION"

EU nations around the Baltic Sea have already been applying many of these ideas. With their economies heavily dependent on Baltic Sea commerce and faced with growing traffic levels on their water ways, Sweden, Finland and Denmark decided, in September 2008, to look at how they could integrate their fragmented maritime surveillance systems. By the spring of 2009, the three nations had a real-time information-sharing system in place integrating the surveillance networks of their navies and civilian authorities, such as police, coast guard and customs. The other EU nations around the Baltic have since joined and naval officers from the region say the system now allows them to share real-time data, and plan rapid and coordinated responses to any challenges, without adding major costs to the taxpayer.

Another pilot scheme, known as BlueMassMed, was launched in January bringing together France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain to boost surveillance interoperability in the Mediterranean. Preparation for MARSUNO, looking at Northern waters, was started in March.

The admirals agree that rather than a 'big bang' approach, which aims to set up an EU-wide integrated surveillance system, a gradual, regional evolution should be the way forward.

They say response to their ideas has been positive from political decision makers and from staff working on maritime policy at the ground level, but they also acknowledge that there are legal, technical and bureaucratic issues that need to be resolved.

“I don’t think we have found any direct opposition to our idea that the need to share is the way to go, more transparency,” sums up Del Pozo. “Nobody opposes that directly, but there is some foot-dragging, which means that we have to go on preaching the gospel.”