In May 1976, in the throne room of the Prince’s Palace, the ministers of France, Italy and Monaco signed an agreement that would become the Mediterranean’s first concrete regional protection accord. Prince Rainier III had been calling for it since 1970, when he stood before the plenary assembly of the International Commission for the Scientific Exploration of the Mediterranean in Rome — with Jacques-Yves Cousteau in the room as Secretary General — and urged the three nations to act together before it was too late.
“The coastal states of the Mediterranean must wait no longer,” Prince Rainier declared. “They must act to safeguard their sea.”
Fifty years on, the RAMOGE Agreement — its name drawn from the initials of Saint-Raphaël, Monaco and Genoa, the three anchor points of its original zone — is marking its anniversary with a full programme of scientific, operational and public events running across France, Italy and Monaco throughout 2026.
What RAMOGE has achieved
The numbers tell a compelling story. Over five decades, the accord has overseen more than 30 anti-pollution exercises, recovered nearly 500 tonnes of hydrocarbons from three real-world emergency activations of its RAMOGEPOL response plan, collected more than 600 tonnes of marine debris — the equivalent of 50 refuse lorries — and identified 67 ecologically significant zones covering 3,060 km² of Mediterranean waters. Five marine protected areas have been created or extended as a direct result of its work, and more than 20 sampling sites monitor water quality on an ongoing basis.
The RAMOGEPOL plan itself was born from tragedy. When the tanker Haven exploded off Genoa in April 1991 — spilling 144,000 tonnes of hydrocarbons in the Mediterranean’s worst ever oil disaster — RAMOGE created a coordinated multinational response framework within two years. It has been activated three times since, most recently in 2018 when a collision between two cargo vessels off Cap Corse allowed 90% of spilled hydrocarbons to be recovered.
Previous deep-sea exploration campaigns have delivered discoveries that were as sobering as they were scientifically significant — human waste found at depths exceeding 2,000 metres in the Monaco Canyon among them.
The 2026 programme
The 50th anniversary celebrations began in March with the launch of the international photography competition RAMOGE — L’Homme et la Mer, open until 31st October, with the prize-giving ceremony to take place in Monaco on 4th December.
A travelling commemorative exhibition opens in Genoa on 28th May before moving to France in September, with a version tailored for the Monaco Ministry of State inaugurated on 26th June in the presence of Prince Albert II — who will also cancel a commemorative stamp to mark the occasion. That same day, a live RAMOGEPOL anti-pollution exercise will be demonstrated at sea, with public access to the installations planned for the day before, followed by a public conference at the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco and a virtual reality experience plunging audiences into the Mediterranean’s submarine canyons.
In late July, a week-long deep-sea exploration campaign aboard the research vessel Alfred Merlin will probe the French, Italian and Monegasque waters of the RAMOGE zone to depths of 500 metres — extending a programme of submarine exploration that has run since 2015 and consistently produced both remarkable discoveries and troubling evidence of human impact.
The autumn will bring a workshop on Posidonia oceanica, the Mediterranean’s emblematic seagrass whose beds cover nearly 50% of coastal floors, produce oxygen, absorb CO₂ and shelter thousands of species — yet lose approximately 2% of their surface each year to anchoring damage alone. The session will accompany the launch of a new RAMOGE guide to the plant, updated for the first time since 2006.
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Photo source: RAMOGE