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Annex 9: Analysis of the EU’s public consultation on Blue Biotechnology Overview of the consultation The European Commission launched a public consultation on Blue Biotechnology via the “Your Voice in Europe” website. The consultation was live between the 18th November and the 10th of February. Questions on the consultation were grouped according to themes e.g. future trends, barriers to growth etc. Additionally private and public organisation, once identifying themselves were offered specific questions relevant for their areas of activities. The questions and the thematic structure of the consultation has been tested on-line by the consortium. The following figure illustrates the opening page of the consultation. Figure 0.32 Screenshot of the main page for the public consultation The Blue Biotechnology stakeholder database was used to promote the public consultation. Over 280 stakeholders have been notified via emails about the launch of the consultations, encouraging them to participate. The study team has used a personalised approach which allowed us to address the individual stakeholders by their name. The mail merger technique has allowed us to derive contact information such as name and email address from the stakeholder database and apply it to a standardised email thereby personalising the message. The contact email has also contained a link to the accreditation letter, provided by the European Commission. A number of replies have been received from the stakeholders contacted containing either questions regarding the online consultation or information on their projects and possible relations to the EC agenda. The study team has followed up on these individual replies to make sure stakeholders receive the information requested. Furthermore we have disseminated information on these responses to the wider study team. 172 Study in support of Impact Assessment work on Blue Biotechnology

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