December 13, 2013 — After almost three-and-a-half years of difficult negotiations, the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) reform package has been approved. The policy is now tasked with returning European fish stocks to sustainable levels and to put an end to wasteful fishing practices.
The new fisheries legislation was given the final green light in a final plenary vote by European Parliament (EP) on 10 December and will start to take effect on 1 January 2014. The basic regulation includes measures to halt overfishing and to reduce the controversial practice of discarding unwanted fish at sea.
EU fisheries chief Maria Damanaki, who initiated the CFP reform process in July 2011, was relieved to see the official adoption of the new legislation, stating that Europe now has “a policy which will radically change our fisheries and will pave the way for a sustainable future for our fishermen and our resources.”
She added that the new CFP is “a driver for what is most needed in today's Europe: a return to growth and jobs for our coastal communities.”
According to EP, currently 88 percent of Mediterranean stocks and 39 percent of Atlantic stocks are overfished due to surplus fleet capacity, excessive catches and patchy compliance with the previous rules. Under the new CFP, member states will have to set sustainable fishing quotas from 2014, and only in clearly defined, exceptional cases, by 2020. At the same time, fishermen will have to respect the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) of stocks. In other words, they will be prevented from catching more than a given stock can reproduce in a given year.
Read the full story at SeafoodSource.com