Source: Mercator Ocean website, DG Enterprise news
The European Commission and Mercator Ocean, the French centre for analysis and forecasting of the global ocean and a EuroGOOS member, have signed on 11 November 2014 an Agreement to implement and manage the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service.
The existing pre-operational Service has been under development since 2009 and is currently being further developed on the basis of a series of EU research projects (the MyOcean series) coordinated by Mercator Ocean, involving more than 60 partners. The Service will become fully operational in April 2015 (after the closure of the MyOcean follow-on project) and is intended to provide regular and systematic reference information on the physical state and on marine ecosystems for the global ocean and the European regional seas.
Under the Delegation Agreement, Mercator Ocean undertakes to successfully implement and develop a user-driven core service expected to contribute to European innovation and competitiveness and help build the Blue Economy, providing generic, reliable, timely and up-to-date information related to the Global Ocean and the European Seas.
Mercator Ocean will receive up to €144 million to enable the implementation of the Service over the period 2014 to 2020, by engaging appropriate EU service providers, in order to obtain the additional components necessary to finalise the service provision.
