Serious divisions over how to manage the Northeast Atlantic’s most important fish stocks left this year’s North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC) meeting without agreement on scientifically grounded catch limits, prompting strong criticism from the European Union.
At the London meeting, held 11–14 November 2025, most NEAFC members rejected the EU’s proposal to set the 2026 mackerel total allowable catch (TAC) in line with scientific advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). The move, the EU warns, will result in “severe overfishing” of a stock that is already below the minimum sustainability threshold.
The same stalemate emerged on blue whiting, another heavily overfished species. Despite the EU’s call to adopt ICES-advised limits and establish a fair sharing arrangement, contracting parties failed to reach consensus.
Transhipment and enforcement concerns
The EU also expressed deep regret over the lack of support for banning transhipment at sea across the NEAFC area. While most contracting parties—including the EU and the UK—already prohibit transhipment in their national waters, they declined to extend this ban to international waters under NEAFC’s remit.
Brussels warned that this gap seriously undermines efforts to curb illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, calling unchecked transhipment “a grave risk” to the sustainability of Northeast Atlantic fish stocks. Attempts to strengthen inspection capacity were similarly resisted.
“Despite the urgency of the situation, we were unable to secure a collective commitment to science-based management of shared stocks,” the Commission said following the meeting. “This lack of alignment risks worsening the condition of already depleted fish populations.”
The Commission vowed to continue working with NEAFC partners to secure sustainable outcomes for iconic shared stocks such as mackerel and blue whiting.
NEAFC, one of the world’s key regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs), oversees the long-term conservation and management of fishery resources in the North-East Atlantic. Its six contracting parties are the EU, Norway, Iceland, the Russian Federation, Denmark (for the Faroes and Greenland), and the UK.
