ELOISE research and the implementation of EU policy in the coastal zone -- Land-ocean fluxes and coastal ecosystems - a guided tour of ELOISE results -- Defining a good ecological status of coastal waters - a case study for the Elbe plume -- Bathing water quality -- Establishing coastal and marine reserves - with the emphasis on fisheries -- Valuing Coastal Systems -- Group report: Methodologies to support implementation of the water framework directive -- The EU Water Framework Directive: Challenges for institutional implementation -- Inclusive and community participation in the coastal zone: Opportunities and dangers -- Group report: Institutional and capacity requirements for implementation of the Water Framework Directory -- Climate change and coastal management on Europe's coast -- Assessment and monitoring requirements for the adaptive management of Europe's regional seas -- Group report: Global change and the European coast - climate change and economic development -- Integrated environmental assessment and coastal futures -- Group report: Integrated assessment and future scenarios for the coast -- Tourism development in the Costa Brava (Girona, Spain) - how integrated coastal zone management may rejuvenate its lifecycle -- Management of contaminated dredged material in the port of Rotterdam -- Integrated assessment for catchment and coastal zone management: The case of the Humber -- The impact of subsidence and sea level rise in the Wadden Sea: Prediction and field verification -- The need for integrated assessment of large-scale offshore wind farm development -- Group report: Reflections on the application of integrated assessment. Coastal zones play a key role in Earth System functioning and form an "edge for society" providing a significant contribution to the life support systems. Goods and services derived from coastal systems depend strongly on multiple transboundary interactions with the land, atmosphere, open ocean and sea bottom. Increasing demands on coastal resources driven by human habitation, food security, recreation and transportation accelerate the exploitation of the coastal landscape and water bodies. Many coastal areas and human activities are subject to increasing risks from natural and man-induced hazards such as flooding resulting from major changes in hydrology of river systems that has reached a global scale. Changes in the hydrological cycle coupled with changes in land and water management alter fluxes of materials transmitted from river catchments to the coastal zone, which have a major effect on coastal ecosystems. The increasing complexity of underlying processes and forcing functions that drive changes on coastal systems are witnessed at a multiplicity of temporal and spatial scales.