At the December Council, EU fisheries Ministers set quotas for 75 stocks in EU waters, covering the North Sea, Kattegat, Skagerrak and Black Sea. Seafish has produced a table that includes the agreed TACs for 2011 and 2012, along with the ICES advice for each stock (see below).
The December TACs were sharply criticised by environmental organisations for ignoring scientific advice and for not following the North Sea long-term management plan for herring. The latter case was particularly disappointing as several of the Member States who pushed for the doubling of the herring quota have also emphasised the need for multiannual plans to become a cornerstone of the reformed CFP.
For the 75 stocks in EU waters, the Council followed scientific advice in only 14 cases. Moreover, the Commission had proposed mandatory cuts of either 15% or 25% for the 44 data poor stocks for which there is an insufficient scientific basis to make TAC assessments. However, the Council only followed these proposals on 4 occasions.
What is surprising is that within the EFF programme for 2007-2013 Member States have not used all the available funding for data collection. During this period, Member States have been underspending by 20% on data collection while at the same time scientific advice is missing for 2/3 of the EU total allowable catch and Member States have failed to comply with the data collection framework regulation.
There is widespread agreement that scientific advice needs to be the basis for the setting of fishing quotas. Therefore, it is also vital that Member States fulfil their responsibilities to ensure that the best quality of advice is available to Ministers. At the moment this is clearly not happening for the majority of EU fish stocks.
Five years ago this month, the U.S entered into law the setting of annual science-based catch limits, as part of their efforts to end overfishing. This has led to considerable improvements – since 2000 23 U.S fish stocks have been declared rebuilt. With the CFP reform proposals on the table not containing any similar obligations for the setting of EU fishing limits despite the current depleted state of EU fish stocks, there are good reasons for looking across the Atlantic to see how fish stocks can be rebuilt.