Legal Policy & Governance WP Meeting, October 2018

Oslo 8-9 October 2018

On 8 and 9 October 2018, WP6-participants met in Oslo for a work package meeting. Two Danish participants were present through Skype. A total of 15 participants presented progress in each task and discussed the way forward in terms of activities, participating partners and a time line for the coming months. We kindly acknowledge the hospitality of our Norwegian partner NIVA who organized this meeting very well.

We discussed the preparation of phase 2 of the questionnaire of task 6.2 in more detail. This phase 2 will consist of a survey that will deliver the additional data to be used in most of the other tasks.

As key messages so far, we have identified the following:

• Regulatory structures at EU, National and Regional levels are very comprehensive and fragmented
• High degree of divergence in how Directives are transposed into national law
• Shades of former pre-EU legislative structures still exist (old issues continue)
• Diversity is not good or bad (both legislation and case studies), it is a reality we have to deal with
• Because of this complexity and diversity, it will be our challenge for the coming years to translate good examples of local government arrangements to other areas, and to advice the EC on further improvements of the regulatory structure at EU level to enable this
• Our data on governance originate from the case studies, this limits the scope of our conclusions (disclaimer).

Sandra Boekhold

Second FAIRWAY Plenary meeting, June 2018

 Aalborg, 20 - 22 June 2018

Forty-nine members of FAIRWAY attended the second plenary meeting in the beautiful  Dronninglund Castle, Aalborg. Highlights included:

• A joint meeting with WaterProtect, who held their own plenary meeting at the same time and venue, with an icebreaker (port from Portugal) and diner. Agreements have been made about working together, organizing workshops and communication/dissemination.
• A field trip to farms, experiments and waterworks, with an active role of Water Supply Aalborg.
• A training session about preparating material for dissemination by social media, concentrating on making infographics and videos to explain the FAIRWAY's key messages. The first infographic (Barriers and solutions in science and policy interaction) has since been released (see below).
• All multi-actor platforms have been established and multi-actor engagement plans have been complied for each case study site.
• First selections of indicators, measures to decrease nitrate and pesticide leaching and farm decision support tools have been made. More in-depth analyses will be made and results will be published in the coming months.
• A questionnaire on the governance arrangements in the case studies was discussed with the partners. The government arrangements in the case studies will be carried out during three phases in the coming year.

Our grateful thanks to Rikke, the team from SEGES and our hosts at Dronninglund for organising such an excellent meeting.

Gerard Velthof