Report | December 13, 2018

Joint NGO recommendations on fishing opportunities for 2019

Objective The annual fixing of fishing opportunities, aimed at limiting fishing mortality, is the main tool for achieving the CFP objective of progressively restoring and maintaining populations of fish stocks above biomass levels capable of producing MSY (BMSY). Setting the annual fishing limits below the MSY exploitation rate (FMSY) would allow fish stocks to recover above these levels, notwithstanding other biological factors.

The CFP only allows the postponement of MSY exploitation rates beyond 2015 “if achieving them by 2015 would seriously jeopardise the social and economic sustainability of the fishing fleets involved”, but also requires that this objective is met for all stocks by 2020 at the latest. To date, very little compelling socio-economic evidence justifying such delays has been made publicly available, raising questions about the quality of the evidence provided by member states