Targets for fixing fishing opportunities

Key points

The EESC:

• acknowledges that the objective of the legislative proposal is to amend the multiannual plans for certain stocks fished in the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the Western Waters, and for fisheries exploiting those stocks, in order to ensure the consistency of the rules governing the fixing of yearly fishing opportunities by the Council;

• recognises that all three multiannual plans contain a so-called ‘5% rule’, which provides that fishing opportunities shall be fixed in such a way as to ensure that there is less than a 5% probability of the spawning stock biomass falling to the point below which there may be reduced reproductive capacity;

• admits that, under certain circumstances relating to the status of a given fish stock and the short-term forecast for its biomass development, the application of the 5% rule may mean that fishing opportunities cannot be set and the targeted fishery must be suspended, with potentially severe socioeconomic implications;

• and, therefore, agrees with the proposal to delete the 5% rule in these three multiannual plans.