Wednesday 1 March 2017

Reference Points For Europe’s Fish Stocks & DiscardLess newsletter



Fisheries management in the European Union entered a new era in 2014 when the reformed Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) went into force.

The CFP stipulates an end to overfishing in EU waters with the goal of restoring fish stocks to productive levels. To ensure effective and legally robust decision-making under the CFP, the framework for advice on fishing limits must reflect the newly agreed-upon requirements. This will benefit the marine environment and bolster the fishing sector’s economic viability.

EU framework for advice on fishing limits

Under the CFP, the European Commission requests scientific advice on fishing limits from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). Today, these requests are based on parameters established under the previous CFP. Those parameters were intended to serve as safety margins to ensure that reproduction of stocks was not impaired. The reformed CFP, however, stipulates a positive vision for the future, meaning that more ambitious parameters, or reference points, must be used to achieve the CFP’s objectives.


A timely publication on the back of this paper comes from the DiscardLess group:




The DiscardLess consortium have just published their third newsletter - who are they? See here: