EU fisheries ministers will be urged to set fishing opportunities at sustainable levels at the AGRIFISH Council in Luxembourg on 15 and 16 October.
Ministers are meeting to discuss and make a political agreement on the European Commission's proposal on Baltic Sea fishing opportunities for 2019, which includes increasing Total Allowable Catches for plaice, Western cod, sprat, Gulf of Riga herring, and Main Basin salmon stocks. These stocks have been recovering, however, Karmenu Vella, Commissioner for the Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, will point out the necessity to reduce the quotas for Western herring and Central herring.
Commissioner Vella will discuss with Ministers the preparation for the upcoming meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), which will take place from 12 to 19 November in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
New plan
A decade after the launch of successful EU-led efforts to halt the decline of the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Bluefin tuna, ICCAT will explore how to move from the current recovery plan towards a new management plan.
Another topic of discussion at the meeting in Dubrovnik will be a possible new management framework for tropical tunas, particularly bigeye tuna, which is currently overfished.
Additionally, Commissioner Vella will participate in an exchange of views on the EU-Norway annual consultation in the framework of the bilateral fisheries agreement. The consultations with Norway on fisheries arrangements for 2019 will take place in Bergen at the end of November.
