European Parliament (EP) has agreed on a multi-annual plan for the stocks of cod, herring and sprat in the Baltic Sea and the fisheries exploiting those stocks.
The new agreement, known as the “Baltic Plan” is the first of its kind, and in a statement the European Commission (EC) said that now the co-legislators have found an agreement on this kind of plan, sustainable long-term management plans can be proposed for other marine regions.
“The new generation of multi-annual plans will be instrumental to deploying the new Common Fisheries Policy and particularly to realizing its most ambitions objective – stopping waste and using all the fish that is caught rather than discarding it,” said the EC.
Plans will also facilitate decentralized decision making for technical measures.
Meanwhile, the EP has also decided to transpose into EU legislation the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) bluefin tuna plan for the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.
This move will undoubtedly uphold the recovery of the stock while providing legal certainty to operators, said the EC.
