An historic deal to reform the broken Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has today been agreed by the EU Parliament and will become law on 1 January 2014.
The final deal follows more than three years of difficult negotiations, in which the UK took the lead to secure significant reform of the fundamentally flawed current CFP.
The new Common Fisheries Policy will radically transform fishing practices in Europe. Reforms include:
- A ban on the wasteful practice of discarding perfectly edible fish
- A legally binding commitment to fishing at sustainable levels
- Decentralised decision making, allowing Member States to agree the measures appropriate to their fisheries
Throughout the negotiations the government fought for a commitment to firm dates to ban discards. Now that the reformed CFP has passed its final vote a ban on discarding in ‘pelagic’ fisheries (such as mackerel and herring) will take effect on 1 January 2015 with a further ban on discards in other fisheries starting from 1 Jan 2016.
The new laws will also allow countries to work together regionally to implement measures appropriate to their own fisheries, rather than be subject to ineffective micro-management from Brussels. This ‘regionalisation’ process has been a top negotiating priority for the UK government which built support for reforms to replace the over-centralised system that currently hinders progress in our fisheries.
The vote also secures for the first time, a legally binding commitment to fishing at sustainable levels. This will ensure annual quotas will be underpinned by scientific advice, to achieve healthy fish stocks and a prosperous fishing industry. This commitment and the ‘regionalisation’ process will both come into force from 1 January 2014. The UK’s priorities for a number of stocks at next week’s EU Fisheries Council will be strongly influenced by the forthcoming legal commitment to fish sustainably, as well as ending wasteful discarding.
2 comments
Comment by Andy Jackson posted on
Very positive spin but what about telling us what you didn't get like the banning of deep sea trawling that is destroying precious habitat in the North Atlantic.
Comment by johnlevitt posted on
Hello Andy,
We strongly support the protection of vulnerable marine ecosystems. We believe that measures to restrict fishing activity in sensitive areas would be much more effective in achieving this objective than a poorly targeted blanket ban on bottom trawling.