Environmental protection of coastal urban areas in the European Union

Abstract EN

The growth of cities in the coastal space constitutes a practice that will continue to extend over time.

The concentration of cities in the coasts constitutes an age-old phenomenon, since the adjacency with the marine element provided appreciable advantages in all the sectors.

However, the coastal space constitutes a separate territorial unit and has a lot of particularities, which differentiate it from all other spaces.

It is particularly sensitive and vulnerable, since it is-mainly today-subject to multiple negative anthropogenic interventions with all the repercussions that this can have on its more general environment.

The problems of coastal space, on the one hand, are not coincidental in nature, while on the other, can by no means be solved without essential interventions, which will be common for all the countries so as to be effective.

All these assessments have matured progressively and have led to the establishment of policies and to the taking of measures by the European Union so as to effective by face the permanently expanding problems of its coastal space.

At the same time, it is absolutely natural that any action and intervention carried out with the intention of management of coastal areas in the European Union will subsequent by influence the urban space where these areas of the environment are found.

The more general policies of the Union and the programmes that are applied in the coastal regions, aim at achieving a viable development of coastal regions and, in the long run, setting a balance and dealing with the environmental, economic and social issues of coastal cities.

The objective of the present paper is to investigate : The intensity and the extent of the repercussions of the policies and actions of the European Union in the environment of urban regions and The extent to which these policies and actions can contribute to the resolution of environmental problems in coastal urban areas.