In October 2012, seventeen Member States plus Norway joined the MARSUR community and thirteen of them signed a “Category B” programme to improve the functionalities and the level of confidentiality of the MARSUR Network in support of CSDP operations. After extensive work by these thirteen Member States, the project came to a decisive point on Friday 12 April 2013, with signature of a contract with the IT company CSC Deutschland Solutions GmbH. This technical development in relation to the Integrated Maritime Policy (October 2007) of the Commission, is fully compliant with the future European Maritime Network that can be connected to the envisaged Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE). The Maritime Surveillance-project (MARSUR), launched by EDA in September 2006 , with the aim of creating a network using existing naval and maritime information exchange systems, is a pragmatic example of the Pooling & Sharing approach. By using available technologies and making them work together, the MARSUR-network has been built by the navies to enhance the exchange of data and information for maritime operations. The MARSUR-network remains open for other willing Member States to join.