Marine Forum Athens

The GMES Forum's main goal was to foster the dialogue between all parties involved in monitoring and producing information for environment and security policies. The interim and final results of the thematic projects and of cross-cutting assessments have fed the dialogue within the Forum participants. The Steering Committee, co-ordination Groups and Project Groups constituted key elements of the events.

The Forum represented the communication platform where the variety of parties involved in the production of information for environment and security policies could meet, with a special emphasize on the user's involvement. It was also one of the main channels of communication to allow federation of initiatives.

With the various GMES activities reported, organisations and people participating to them, the GMES FORUM represented the first target group for the dissemination and communication of the results of the individual projects and assessment actions. It was also aiming to gather the current jigsaw under the same umbrella, helping to define their typology and their needs.

Four main Conferences were held during the Initial Period (2002-2003). The first one took place in Brussels (Be) in summer 2002, the second in Noordwijk (NL) in January 2003, the third in Athens (Gr) in June 2003, and the fourth in Baveno (Lago Maggiore - Italy) in November 2003.

An important forum dealing with maritime issues was held in Athens  in December 2002 in the framework of the EuroGOOS conference.