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 Stakeholder information provided via the public consultation. Overall the study identified that the EU Blue Biotechnology sector is not living up to its full growth potential. This limited potential is considered to be the result of a range of barriers that are particular to the EU Blue Biotechnology sector:  Difficulty in sampling the huge diversity of resources;  Potential high cost of sampling some of these;  The consequent preponderance of public funding for Research and Development;  The complexity of property rights under marine governance mediated by UNCLOS;  The lack of clarity on the mechanism for benefit sharing particularly in marine systems re Nagoya;  The uncertainty of the status of genetic resources in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction;  The dependence upon SMEs to translate R&D results into a marketable product for commercialisation;  The high risk and vulnerability of SMEs; and  Problems of economic data availability within a poorly defined sector. The regulatory review carried out pointed to a number of barriers that are cross-cutting and interwoven. They relate to Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) from the discovery of new marine bioactives both on the high seas in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ) as well as between states with joint efforts. The lack of clarity can cause legal uncertainty regarding the source and traceability of marine resources used in Blue Biotechnology products thereby increasing the risks to investment. The existence of these barriers along with the lack of clarity also has implications for policy in overcoming these barriers to release the potential of Blue Biotechnology across the EU. Objectives and policy options Based on the general problems as identified above, the following general objectives have been identified. These are objectives that the policy aims to contribute to: 1. Enhance cooperation across the value chain; 2. Facilitate access to knowledge and exploratory infrastructure; 3. Facilitate access to finance across the value chain; and 4. Facilitate access to resources. A closer analysis of the general objectives allows a larger number of possible specific objectives to be identified. These specific objectives are crucial as they set out what the policy interventions are expected to concretely achieve. Four specific objectives have been selected on the basis of the underlying evidence, the importance considered by stakeholders, and the scope for EU action. 1. Enhance cooperation between research institutes, SMEs and businesses involved in upscaling; 2. Promote integration of exploratory infrastructure for bioprospecting purposes; 3. Facilitate access to finance for second and third round product development stages; and 4. Improve clarity and completeness of the legal framework. For each of these specific objectives, a number of operational objectives have been defined, analysed and then translated into policy actions. Policy options A number of areas of potential EU approaches have been put forward by the European Commission to guide sector development towards meeting the above detailed specific objectives. These include a baseline scenario, a soft option and finally a more stringent approach. These three options have been assessed in light of the problem areas and the specific objectives and have iv Study in support of Impact Assessment work on Blue Biotechnology

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