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.

