SmatterChew

The m2eclipse plugin doesn’t use Eclipse defaults, the m2eclipse plugin derives the settings from the POM. So if you want a Maven project to be configured to use the latest version of Java when imported under Eclipse, configure the maven-compiler-plugin appropriately:

<plugin>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
  <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>2.1</version>
  <configuration>
    <source>1.6</source>
    <target>1.6</target>
  </configuration>
</plugin>


Via: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3539139/what-causes-a-new-maven-project-in-eclipse-to-use-java-1-5-instead-of-java-1-6-b