Monday 28 September 2026
Online
NEXTMARINE held its first webinar, “From sampling to sharing: legal rules for marine biodiversity”, on Monday 28 September 2026, from 10:00 to 13:00 CEST, online and open to all. The session was organised with Synergy at the Extreme, the cluster that brings NEXTMARINE together with the Horizon Europe sibling projects EXPLORA, XTREAM and XTREMOLIFE.
The programme opened with an overview of the four projects and their sampling areas, presented by Assoc. Prof. Ioannis Pavlidis (University of Crete) for NEXTMARINE, Dr Ana Mencher (ITENE) for EXPLORA, Antonio García-Moyano (NORCE) for XTREAM and Lavinia Plataroti (Algreen) for XTREMOLIFE.
It then moved through the Nagoya Protocol and how access and benefit-sharing is applied worldwide with Dr Annika Engelhardt (Kiel University and the German Nagoya Protocol HuB), who highlighted how differences between countries’ approaches affect research on genetic resources. Dr Paraskevi Polymenakou (HCMR) covered the Global Biodiversity Framework, digital sequence information and the BBNJ Agreement, showing where research attention should focus and which maritime zones, from national waters to the high seas, shape the rules that apply.
Dr Katerina Papadopoulou (Technology Transfer Office, University of Patras) then addressed sample transfer and material transfer agreements, before Ioannis Rallis, M.Sc. (HCMR) presented data governance and the FAIR principles, tracing a didactic pathway from the collection of a sample to its reuse as shareable data. Dr Papadopoulou closed the session with the exploitation of results in sensitive international contexts, so that research meets the required standards and its results remain legally secure.
More than 85 people joined the webinar over the morning. The audience was mainly from research institutions and universities, alongside participants from industry, a regulatory office and a non-governmental organisation. Participants connected from Greece, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Slovakia, Belgium, France, Poland and Sweden, as well as from other European countries, Asia and Africa.