Manual: marine policy instruments and legislation for the Belgian part of the North Sea

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Vademecum: Mariene beleidsinstrumenten en wetgeving voor het Belgische deel van de Noordzee

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Kustbarometer : onze duinen 100 jaar na datum...

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The matrix of cold-water coral mounds: origin and early-diagenetic interactions

Corals have long been associated with warm and shallow water in tropical settings. Nevertheless an important group of corals thrives in deep and cold waters where they feed on plankton and suspended organic material in the water column. Cold-water corals have been observed along the entire NE Atlantic margin. In certain places these cold-water corals build important geological features on the seabed such as the kilometers-long Lophelia reef complexes, which have been mapped off Norway. However, the most spectacular coral build-ups are, without any doubt, mound structures which reach heights up to 300 meter and have diameters up to several kilometers. Hence, they represent some of the most impressive bioherms in the world. Clusters of such cold-water coral mounds can be found in the Porcupine Seabight and the Rockall Trough, west of Ireland but also more to the south in the Gulf of Cadiz, in the Alboran Sea and off the Mauritanian coast. In 2005, the IODP (Integrated Ocean Drilling Program) expedition 307 drilled for the first time a complete sequence through a cold-water coral mound (i.e. Challenger Mound, Porcupine Seabight) revealing the presence of cold-water corals from the top to the base of the mound. Hence, the corals are really the engineers for the build-up of these mound structures. Several generations of PhD theses, conducted over the last two decades, have already provided a broad overview of cold-water coral mound distribution, morphology, habitat mapping and contemporary constraints on mound build-up. The present thesis will zoom in on two distinct niches which, until now, remained largely unexplored: (1) the terrigenous fraction in a cold-water coral mound as a recorder of paleo-environmental conditions and (2) cold-water coral mounds as a natural laboratory to study early-diagenetic processes in cool-water carbonate bodies

Puzzles of the state aid rules on RDI

Despite the improvement of the State aid rules on Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) during the past decade, stakeholders have claimed that the current rules are at points ambiguous, which results in a negative impact on innovation. By means of an exploratory case study and participatory action research, this article aims to identify the ambiguities in the RDI rules. While the rules are detailed and overall well explained, we detect three themes where ambiguities arise, ie non-economic activities, price calculation of goods or services provided by research organisations, and ancillary activities of research organisations together with the 20% threshold. For each of these categories, we discuss what constitutes a ‘safe’ interpretation of the concepts involved. This entails an interpretation that is in line with the case law as well as with the spirit of State aid control. Where appropriate and possible, we provide examples as well as suggestions for their practical implementation. Next to providing guidance regarding the detected ambiguities, this article aspires a contribution to the forthcoming revision of the State aid rules for RDI