Last week’s Baltic Sea Action Summit in Helsinki concluded with few binding commitments made and mixed reactions to the meeting’s outcome.

According to the Finnish Environmental Institute’s Seppo Knuuttila, the most notable achievements were the Polish decision to implement a ban on phosphates in detergents and Finland’s commitment to work towards closed cycles regarding agricultural nutrients. Though seen by many analysts as failing to attain hoped for far-reaching measures, Knuuttila was nonetheless satisfied with the outcome.

“The focus here has been mainly on repeating the core parts of programmes that have been previously agreed upon, and promising to fulfil the commitments. If this is what happens, it is good. With these targets it has been estimated that the Baltic Sea will be in good shape by 2021,” said Knuuttila. The previous promises were related to the Helsinki Agreement, or the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission of 2007, as reported by Helsingin Sanomat.

There was, however, a failure to consolidate definitive actions aimed at restricting agricultural runoff. “Poland’s commitment to ban phosphates in detergents by 2014 is a big matter. In spite of it, the commitments of foundations and organisations that were made public last week have contained many more concrete goals and actions,” claimed Knuuttila.

Finnish President Tarja Halonen had praise for some of the private company initiatives. “One good thing about the promises was that the business world seems to be dynamically involved. Wise entrepreneurs – and there are quite a few of them – keep up with the times, feel responsibility, and notice that it is a good idea to be involved at an early stage.” Halonen lamented the “low-level” input into the talks by the German government but focused instead on the promises of Baltic, Nordic and Russian representatives.

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