Report | July 27, 2020

Recommendations for the European Commission and the EU Council on the setting of Northeast Atlantic fishing opportunities for 2021

Fisheries ministers and the European Commission failed to achieve the objective of ending overfishing in  the Northeast Atlantic region, as per the 2020 deadline outlined in Article 2.2 of the CFP. In 2020, when  the transition period and legal deadline to end overfishing concluded, 46 percent of Northeast Atlantic  TACs  were  still  set  exceeding  scientific  advice  by  fisheries  ministers  in  December  2019.  Even  in  the  Commission’s  TAC  proposal  that  set  the  basis  for  these  decisions,  almost  half  of  the  proposed  TACs  exceeded scientific advice.

In addition to failing to meet the CFP’s own legal deadline for achieving sustainable fisheries, these TAC decisions  do  not  uphold  the  original  intent  of  the  regulation  to  recover  stocks and  provide  high  yield  fisheries, and therefore cannot deliver the related environmental, social, and economic benefits.