The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) implies establishment of monitoring programmes for assessment, enabling the state and impact of the marine waters to be evaluated on a regular basis. Recently, several marine litter activities have been initiated parallel with the implementation of EU MSFD in Europe and thereby also in some of the Nordic countries, i.e. Sweden, Denmark and Finland. In Norway and Iceland, although not members of EU, national management plans for the marine environment in these countries also include many of the same important elements as in the EU MSFD and also targeting marine litter. For the other Nordic countries that are not EU Member States, i.e. Faroe Islands and Greenland, marine litter can also be relevant for their national marine management plans, although it is not at the moment targeted as a specific element within these plans.