The European Parliament and Council agreed today to a new regulation granting a loophole to some of Europe’s fishermen to discard certain species, despite an omnibus discard ban put in place in a major revision of the CFP just ratified last year.
The move allows EU fishermen and fishermen fishing in EU waters to discard bigeye and bluefin tuna, along with capelin and swordfish whenever regional fishery regulations require them to do so.
The CFP’s recent revision, which both NGOs and the industry have argued was long overdue, included among other key updates a discard ban, effective 1 January 2015 that forbade fishermen to dispose of any fish caught at sea that by law they were not allowed to keep. The ban requires fishermen to land those same fish, rather than toss them, usually dead, back into the ocean.
But that ban clashes with regional fisheries management organizations such as the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna, which requires species such as Atlantic bluefin and bigeye tuna not be landed no matter what the new CFP mandates.
In a statement, EU officials said the new regulation “will provide legal clarity” on who can discard what.
In response, Karmenu Vella, European Commissioner for the Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries spoke in support of the move.
"I am happy that the new measures will be introduced in a way that supports fishermen as they make the switch to the new rules,” he said “The agreement reached today, on the reporting obligation and the responsibility for the storage and handling of landed undersized fish, is a step in that direction without increasing the burden. This was a successful early test of the newly reformed Common Fisheries Policy.”
