ABSTRACT

The management of coastal zones involves environmental protection, maintenance of the ecological balance, promotion of economic development and care for the quality of life. It is implemented through the control, neutralisation or elimination of negative factors and the promotion of positive factors at a sustainable level. EU co-operation and partnership is introducing, with relevance to coastal management in the Baltic area, an increasingly all-European dimension besides that offered by the co-operation within the framework of the Council of Europe. Coastal zone management in the Baltic area has been rightly understood as a matter of regional partnership and co-operation. Fisheries are of significant economic importance for parts of the coastal population. Serious concern for the sustainability of fishing communities' interests led already in 1974, to the establishment of a fisheries commission by the coastal states, to deal with the allocation of fishing quotas and the maintenance of ecological balance between the different species of sea fauna.