Report | April 17, 2017

Joint NGO priorities on the Multi – annual Plan for the North Sea

We call on MEPs to support the Commission’s proposal to:

  • Ensure that exploitation of living marine biological resources restores and maintains populations of harvested species above levels which can produce the Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) (Articles 3(1), 8(1) and 8(2));
  • Contribute to the elimination of discards by avoiding and reducing, as far as possible, unwanted catches (Article 3(2));
  • Implement the ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management and ensure coherence with the objective of achieving good environmental status by 2020 in the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) (Articles 3(3) and 3(4));
  • Allocate fishing opportunities in accordance with the likely catch composition (Article 10(1)).