Report | December 4, 2019
2019 December AGRIFISH Council: Fishing opportunities for the Western Mediterranean Sea (WestMedMAP)
Oceana urges Spanish, French and Italian Ministers for Fisheries to show political courage at the upcoming EU Council of Fisheries Ministers (16-17 December 2019) to adopt stronger reductions of fishing efforts than proposed by the European Commission, of at least -20% of fishing effort for 2020.
The challenge of the EU negotiations will be to demonstrate the political ambition for this first multiannual management plan in the Mediterranean, especially in light of the risks of failure of the plan listed below. For Oceana, increased fishing effort reduction is justified because of the critical situation of stocks (80% are overexploited – see Fig 1) but also to be precautionary to reflect:
- the excessive and widespread engine power fraud in the fleet
- the likely increase of the maximum daily fishing hours to 18h/day
- the poor correlation between “fishing effort” and “fishing mortality”

