Environmental organisations have expressed their disappointment at the outcome of the EU ministers’ agreement on 2016 fishing quotas.
Greenpeace says that the agreement “endorses continued overfishing of stocks in the Northeast Atlantic and the North Sea”.
"Fisheries ministers failed to comply with EU rules, selling out to industry at the expense of stocks like cod and sole, and without providing justification for the continued overfishing,” said Justine Maillot, Greenpeace EU oceans policy adviser. “At the very least now, ministers must minimise the havoc fishing can cause by allocating quotas preferentially to fishermen using low-impact fishing methods."
Although the organisation acknowledges that some fishing quotas were reduced in line with scientific advice, Greenpeace says that ministers have set fishing limits well above the level scientists recommended for important stocks, like cod in the Irish and Celtic Seas and wider Atlantic, hake in waters off Spain and Portugal, and sole in the Bay of Biscay and the Eastern Channel.
Oceana has also described the agreement as disappointing and says it deplores the lack of ambition fisheries ministers have demonstrated to honour the commitments agreed in the Common Fisheries Policy, in particular the ending of overfishing.
“Today’s ministers’ decision on catch limits is clearly insufficient to accomplish the binding commitment to eradicate overfishing from European waters,” said Lasse Gustavsson, executive director of Oceana in Europe. “The gap between politics and science continues. By doing so, not only the sustainable exploitation of fish resources is threatened but it also risks the prosperity of fishing activities”.
