House of Lords - European Union - Twenty-First Report

Select Committee on European Union Twenty-First Report

The Progress of the Common Fisheries Policy

Chapter 1: Introduction and Factual Background

Purpose and Scope of this Inquiry, Structure of this Report

1. Our intention in conducting this inquiry has been to carry out a mid-term review of the implementation of the 2002 reform of the EU's Common Fisheries Policy, with a view to drawing lessons for future reform of the CFP, and for other legislative proposals currently being drawn up at EU and national level.

2. Recent and imminent proposals affecting fisheries include the proposal for a Council Regulation on Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing (COM/2007/602), the proposal for a Council Regulation concerning the conservation of fisheries resources through technical measures (COM/08/324), forthcoming proposals[1] to modernise and reform the control system applicable to the Common Fisheries Policy, and broader marine policy being formulated at the EU, national and sub-national level, such as the draft Marine Bill published by the UK Government on 3 April 2008.

3. While there appears to be considerable consensus on the failings of the Common Fisheries Policy, witnesses were also keen to remind us that those failings persist for good reason: fisheries management poses a number of singularly intractable challenges. Our report therefore begins with a brief recapitulation of some of these challenges, and a look back at the history and evolution of the CFP. We then move on to examine the main features of the 2002 CFP reform. We present the evidence we received on the impact of those changes (Chapter 2), and our witnesses' views on the ongoing challenges facing fisheries managers (Chapter 3). From that evidence, we draw our conclusions and recommendations, identifying what we regard as the most promising avenues for future reform.

4. The inquiry that led to this report was carried out by EU Sub-Committee D, whose Members are listed in Appendix 1. We received written evidence and heard oral evidence from a wide range of witnesses, who are listed in Appendix 2. We are grateful to them all for their contributions. We would also like to thank those who facilitated our visits to Peterhead and Brussels. We are particularly indebted to Professor John Pope, our Specialist Adviser on this inquiry. We make this report to the House for debate.

Managing Fisheries: Challenges

5. It is no coincidence that fisheries are often used to illustrate what economists call the "Tragedy of the Commons". The phenomenon arises in relation to the management of resources that are accessible to anyone (i.e. non-excludable) and competitive (rival) in consumption—such that what one person uses cannot be used by anyone else. Where a resource possesses these characteristics, it is rational for each consumer to consume as large a share of the resource as they can, without heed for the consequences of everyone acting as they do. Restraint, it is assumed, would only benefit their less scrupulous peers.

6. In fisheries, this manifests itself as each fisherman facing a strong incentive to fish as intensively as possible, even if collectively this is likely to lead to the depletion of the stock that is being fished. Prudent harvesting by one fisherman, with a view to protecting the stock, will most likely only yield larger catches for other, less restrained, fishermen. The end result—the depletion of the stock—will be the same. Hence the incentive to grab one's share as quickly as possible while the resource is still available. Fishermen consequently face strong incentives to over-exploit the very resource on which their livelihoods depend.

7. The fundamental challenge for fisheries managers is to prevent this phenomenon from taking its natural course. A dramatic illustration of what happens when they fail was provided by the collapse of the cod stock off Newfoundland and the other Atlantic provinces of Canada in 1992. The depletion of that stock led to a fishing moratorium that deprived tens of thousands of people of their livelihoods. The stock has yet to recover fully.

8. Economic theory indicates that the solution to the Tragedy of the Commons phenomenon lies in assigning property rights to the resource. Fisheries, however, do not easily lend themselves to this approach. One complicating factor is that fish stocks are a renewable natural resource. Private ownership will therefore apply to the right to harvest (a proportion of) the resource, not to the resource itself, which is a public good. A further complication is that fish stocks are a mobile resource: shoals of fish can migrate across national jurisdictions. It is for this reason that fisheries management requires international cooperation, and international recognition of rights awarded.[2] Mixed fisheries—containing a range of species—create further difficulties, in that although ownership rights may be assigned on paper, it can be impossible in practice to target one species without also catching fish from another (so-called by-catch[3]). The demersal[4] (sea-bed) fisheries around the UK, for example, are typically mixed fisheries.

9. Perhaps most challenging, however, is the enforcement of any type of rights-based management regime. In the EU, commercial fishing takes place over an enormous area, through tens of thousands of vessels, whose activities are difficult to monitor and costly to patrol.

10. Assigning rights to harvest a proportion of a given fish stock requires monitoring of the size of the stock itself from year to year. It is not possible to count every fish or to map in detail the distribution of fish stocks in national or EU waters. Management instead relies on scientific stock assessments, produced on the basis of surveys carried out by research vessels and catch data provided by the fishing industry. For some stocks, particularly non-commercial species, there is little specific information on stock levels or distribution available. Because managers want to decide on catch restrictions before fish are caught, scientists normally have to predict stock size one or two years in advance of the available data. Stock assessments prepared for EU waters are as thorough as anywhere in the world, but margins of error can still be as high as 40 per cent, and are amplified by misreporting of catches.

11. This uncertainty is exacerbated by natural year-on-year fluctuations in the cohort of young fish entering the exploitable stock ("year-class strength"). Year-class strength is influenced by natural factors such as water temperature, food availability and the size of the parent stock. Climate change is expected to accentuate these natural fluctuations even further (Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science Memorandum, pp 5-6).

12. Fisheries managers also have to contend with what is known as "technology creep": technological progress means that fishing vessels become more and more effective over time, so that the same number of vessels can catch more fish. This can result from faster or more powerful vessels being able to exploit a wider range of fishing grounds, or from the ability to locate and catch fish with greater ease due to improved technology.

Managing Fisheries: Tools

13. A range of tools are available to fisheries managers seeking to restrict fishing activity to a level compatible with the sustainable exploitation of fish stocks, or to target fishing activity more selectively. Catch restrictions, in the form of Total Allowable Catches (TACs) or quotas are perhaps the best-known of these tools. Their intended effect is to limit fishing mortality (the number of deaths in a fish stock—see Box 1 below) by curbing the amount of fish of a particular species that a given individual or group can catch. Their main drawbacks are that they can be difficult for fishermen to adhere to, particularly in mixed fisheries; that they rely on high-quality stock assessments to measure the size of the stock and thus the proportion that can be caught; and that they are cumbersome to enforce, because they effectively require detailed record-keeping of fish caught and landed by individual vessels.

BOX 1

Fishing Mortality

Scientists measure the intensity of fishing through the fishing mortality rate. It is the variable that fisheries management seeks to control directly by limiting catches or fishing effort. The fishing mortality rate is related to the proportion of fish being killed in a year through a mathematical formula. It is a component, usually the major component of the total mortality rate on exploited ages of fish. Other components are caused by natural deaths, e.g. those due to predation or disease. The relationships of fish survivals and deaths in a year to total mortality rate are curvilinear; deaths progressively approach 100 per cent and survivals progressively approach 0 per cent as total mortality rate becomes large, as the graph below illustrates.

Were fishing mortality rate the only cause of death the graph would indicate the deaths it would produce over a year. However, since there are other causes the total deaths are prorated between those due to natural and to fishing causes. The virtue of using mortality rates as measures of fishing and other causes of death is that they are additive. Thus the fishing mortality rate might be expected to respond by the same proportion as changes in fishing effort (e.g. as total days fished) while the proportion killed would not.

14. Effort controls provide a second option. Their intended effect is to limit fishing mortality by curbing the number of vessels allowed to fish, or their power, or the amount of time (normally in days) that they are permitted to spend at sea. While they are in principle easier to adhere to and enforce, effort controls have their own drawbacks. One is that the relationship between fishing effort and fishing mortality cannot always be clearly defined, meaning that effort controls are a somewhat blunt instrument, particularly in mixed fisheries. A further difficulty is that if used alone, effort controls create an incentive to fish more efficiently, and to target the most valuable species in a given fishery, thus discouraging diversification and intensifying fishing pressure.

BOX 2

Discards

Discards occur when fish and other marine organisms are thrown back into the sea after being caught. Although a small proportion of fish of certain species survive the process, the vast majority are thrown back dead. Fishermen may throw fish overboard for a number of reasons, including:

High-grading—when less valuable sizes of quota species are discarded so that the vessel can land a higher-value catch

Unmarketable Species—when species of no commercial interest are thrown back overboard.

Unmarketable Sizes—when immature fish below the minimum legal landing size are discarded.
Insufficient quota—when species for which the fisherman has no quota, and therefore cannot land legally, are thrown back into the sea.

Discarding may thus be prompted by economic considerations or by regulatory factors. Whatever the cause, discarding undermines management by quotas, as the volumes of fish landed are not a precise reflection of the number of fish caught.

15. Technical conservation measures offer tools designed to target fishing activity more selectively, so that only the desired fish are caught and discards are avoided (see Box 2 above). This category includes direct restrictions on fishing gear (e.g. minimum mesh sizes designed to ensure that only mature fish are caught), and indirect incentives to use more selective types of fishing gear, such as minimum and maximum landing sizes for fish belonging to particular species. One drawback of technical conservation measures from the point of view of enforcement and competition is that they do not lend themselves to uniform, centralised imposition: different measures will be appropriate in different fisheries, but this can lead to an uneven playing field in terms of the restrictions placed on vessels fishing in different areas and for different species. Moreover, compliance with technical measures normally has to be monitored at sea and is therefore expensive.

16. Fisheries managers may also choose to close particular sea areas to fishing activity. This can take a range of forms, for example the creation of marine protected areas, in which all human activity that may damage vulnerable marine habitats is prohibited, or be limited to temporary closures of nursery or spawning grounds that are important to the renewal of vulnerable fish stocks. Drawbacks of this type of measure include the need for detailed and reliable information on the location of such areas (which may change over time), and the risk of displacing fishing activity, creating intense fishing pressure in the waters immediately bordering a closed area, for example.

17. Owing to the drawbacks of each of these management tools, the general consensus is that fisheries managers need to have a "toolkit" of management measures at their disposal. This is the approach that has progressively been enshrined in the Common Fisheries Policy operated by the EU and its Member States.

The CFP: History & Evolution

18. The origins of the CFP lie in Articles 32 to 38 of the Treaty of Rome, which made provision for a Common Agricultural Policy explicitly encompassing fisheries, defined as "agricultural products" in Article 32. It was not until 1970, however, that the Council of Ministers adopted legislation establishing a Common Organisation of the Market in fisheries products, and established the principle of "equal access" for EC vessels to Member State waters, with the exception of a narrow coastal band reserved to local fishermen with a tradition of fishing in that area.

19. The accession of Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom—whose catches represented more than twice those of the six founding Members—to the EEC in January 1973 prompted a review of the principle of equal access. A ten-year derogation was introduced to extend exclusive national fishing rights to 6 nautical miles, and to allow other Member States' vessels to fish in the 6 to 12 mile band only where this reflected historic access rights.

20. At that time, most of the world's oceans were deemed to be high seas. International maritime law gave countries jurisdiction out to 12 nautical miles from their coastline, beyond which lay international waters. By 1976, however, international developments prompted Member States to lay claim to Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of 200 nautical miles from their coastline. It was at this juncture that the European Community assumed responsibility for the development of fisheries policy within the EEZs of its Member States. Seven years of negotiations led to the adoption of a Council Regulation[5] formally establishing a Common Fisheries Policy in 1983.

21. The 1983 Regulation organised the CFP around four components: market policy, structural policy, conservation policy and relations with third countries. Market policy was intended to establish marketing standards and stabilise markets, while taking into account consumers' interests and the incomes of fishermen. Structural policy provided Community aid for investment in the European fishing fleet. Conservation policy was to allow for balanced exploitation of fishery resources. A menu of conservation measures that the Council could choose to impose were specified in the Regulation, including the option to set an annual TAC for a stock or group of stocks.

22. Member States' shares of the TAC were to be distributed "in a manner which assures each Member State relative stability of fishing activities for each of the stocks considered." Under this principle of relative stability, which underpins the CFP to this day, Member States are allocated a fixed share of the Total Allowable Catch for a given fish stock, based on their fleet's past record of fishing activity.

23. The 1983 Regulation also provided for a renewal of the ten-year derogation from the principle of equal access: Member States were to retain exclusive fishing rights within 6 miles of their coast, while between 6 and 12 miles other Member States' vessels would only be allowed to fish where they could demonstrate historic access rights.

24. It is the renewal of this derogation that has provided the occasion for subsequent reforms to the basic framework of the CFP. A first major reform took place in 1992, with the adoption of Council Regulation 3760/92. It attempted to address what had emerged as a serious imbalance between the fishing capacity of Member States' fleets and available fishing opportunities. The reform consequently prescribed a reduction in the size of the Community's fishing fleet, accompanied by structural measures to alleviate the socio-economic impact of such reductions. The Regulation also introduced the concept of fishing effort—referring to the product of a vessel's capacity to catch fish and its activity. Restrictions on fishing effort, and specifically, limits on the time vessels are allowed to spend at sea, were added to the menu of conservation measures available to the Council. The 1992 reform also obliged Member States to operate national licensing regimes designed to regulate access to fisheries.

25. By the late 1990s, however, it had become clear that the reformed CFP had failed to stem the decline in fish stocks in Community waters. Many were at critically low levels, and some—notably cod—on the brink of collapse due to intense and unsustainable fishing pressure. Declining stocks were in turn putting the long-term viability of the fishing industry at risk.

26. In a "roadmap"[6] for the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy published in May 2002, the European Commission identified what had emerged as the main shortcomings of the CFP (summarised in Box 3 below) and presented its proposals for reform. Later that year, in December 2002, EU Ministers agreed on a second major reform of the CFP, consisting of a new basic Regulation and new arrangements for Community structural aid to the fishing sector.[7]

BOX 3

Main Shortcomings of the Common Fisheries Policy in 2002

The alarming state of many fish stocks: the Commission noted that stock sizes and landings had declined dramatically over the previous 25 years. For many commercially important demersal (sea-bed) stocks, the numbers of mature fish had halved between the early 1970s and the late 1990s. The Commission warned that if these trends were to continue, many Community fish stocks could collapse.

Over-capacity in the fishing fleet: the Commission pointed out that the fishing capacity of Member States' fleets was far in excess of that required to harvest the available fishery resources in a sustainable manner. Scientific advice was indicating that the rate of fishing mortality in the main Community fish stocks needed to be reduced by between one-third and one-half (depending on the area and type of fishery) to reach a sustainable level of fishing.

Economic fragility of the fisheries sector: the Commission stressed that most of the Community fisheries sector was experiencing poor financial profitability and steadily declining employment. 66,000 jobs had been lost in the catch sector over the period 1990 to 1998, a decrease of 22 per cent. Over the same period, employment in the fish processing sector had declined by 14 per cent.

Uneven enforcement: the Commission noted that the control and enforcement arrangements in place had been insufficient to create a level playing field across the EU, and concluded that this was undermining the credibility of the CFP.

Non-inclusive governance: the Commission recognised that stakeholders had not been sufficiently involved in shaping policy, and suggested that this had undermined support for, and compliance with, the conservation measures adopted under the CFP.

27. The new basic Regulation set broader objectives for the CFP, laying down that the Community should take measures to protect and conserve living aquatic resources, provide for their sustainable exploitation, and minimise the impact of fishing activities on marine ecosystems. It called for the progressive implementation of an ecosystem approach to fisheries management, but also stipulated that the CFP should contribute to "efficient fishing activities within an economically viable and competitive fisheries and aquaculture industry, providing a fair standard of living for those who depend on fishing activities and taking into account the interests of consumers."[8]

28. The new Regulation sought to promote a longer-term approach to fisheries management, which had thus far been conducted in annual cycles, by introducing the possibility of adopting multi-annual recovery and management plans for particular stocks. Recovery plans were to consist of multi-annual strategies to recover stocks outside safe biological limits (Article 5). Management plans were to consist of multi-annual strategies designed to maintain stocks within safe biological limits where they were already at or within those limits. At the time, this Committee warned that the fatal weakness of the new legislation lay in the absence of deadlines for when recovery plans would have to be established, allowing negotiations to continue indefinitely.[9]

29. As part of the 2002 reform of the CFP, it was also agreed that the Multi-Annual Guidance Programmes that had previously provided a framework for reducing fleet capacity would be replaced by an entry-exit regime, designed to ensure that entries to each national fleet were matched by exits—see Box 4 below.[10] National fleet references designed to impose a ceiling on the size of member states' fleets were established for this purpose, and responsibility for matching fishing capacity to fishing opportunities was handed back to each Member State.

BOX 4

Licensing of Fishing Vessels

The fleet references established under the 2002 reform of the CFP are designed to ensure that national fleets cannot grow in either tonnage terms or kilowatt terms overall. Each vessel has a licence for its tonnage and engine power without which it is illegal to fish commercially.

In the UK, no new fishing licences are issued, and so new entrants to the industry need to transfer a licence entitlement from an existing licence holder. There are different categories of licence for the exploitation of different stocks. There is no administrative charge for licences in the UK. Instead, their value is set by the market.

30. The previous system, whereby national fleets were sub-divided into segments, with capacity or effort reduction targets assigned to each, had proved cumbersome to manage and failed to tackle chronic overcapacity. While the new regime calls on Member States to adjust the fishing capacity of their fleets to the available fishing opportunities, it does not set overall capacity reduction targets.

31. The 2002 CFP regulation upheld the basic principle that Member States have primary responsibility for the enforcement of the CFP in waters under their jurisdiction. However, the new basic regulation did provide for a greater degree of co-ordination and co-operation among Member States with regard to enforcement activities in Article 28. This Article has subsequently been used as the legal basis for the establishment of the Community Fisheries Control Agency. Agreed in 2005 and operational since 2007, the Agency is charged with co-ordinating Member States' control and inspection activities under the CFP and organising the deployment of pooled national control and inspection resources, with the aim of improving the effectiveness and uniformity of enforcement.[11]

32. A further notable innovation introduced in 2002 was the provision for the establishment of Regional Advisory Councils in Article 31 of the new basic regulation.[12] These bodies were intended to secure greater stakeholder involvement in the CFP, by offering interest groups a channel through which to provide advice to the European Commission and Member States on fisheries management in a given area. The bodies were to cover sea areas under the jurisdiction of at least two Member States, and to be composed of all parties with an interest in fisheries management in that area, including the fishing industry, environmental and consumer groups, regional and national authorities and the Commission. Since the reform entered into force, six Regional Advisory Councils have become operational, spanning the North Sea, Baltic Sea, North Western Waters, South Western Waters, Pelagic stocks across all areas, and Distant Water fisheries. A Mediterranean RAC is also in the process of being established.

33. Significantly, however, the 2002 reform preserved two critical aspects of the CFP: waters up to 12 nautical miles from the coastline continue to be exempt from the principle of equal access to Member State waters. Meanwhile fishing opportunities continue to be distributed among Member States according to the principle of relative stability, using a distribution key based on historic fishing activity.

The Distribution of Fishing Opportunities

34. Under the CFP, fishing opportunities are set in the form of a TAC for each of the main commercial species. TACs are set annually, in the December Council of Fisheries Ministers, on the basis of a Commission proposal. The Commission proposal is itself based on scientific and management advice received from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). For most stocks, this advice consists of an assessment of the state of the stock, and a consequent recommendation regarding the TAC for that stock.

35. Traditionally, the Commission has received ICES' advice in October each year, and published its own proposals on TACs, effort controls and other management measures for the year ahead by the end of November or early December. Stakeholders and Member States then have less than a month to analyse the Commission's proposals before they are considered, amended and adopted in the Council of Agriculture and Fisheries Ministers held in late December each year. Negotiations among Ministers tend to focus on the overall size of the TAC for a given stock and the effort controls to be imposed—in other words on the management advice to be drawn from the scientific assessment.

36. Once set, TACs are divided up among Member States using a distribution key based on the principle of relative stability. Annual negotiations among Member States are thus not over how fishing opportunities are to be shared out among countries (national quotas), but about the total number of fish to be caught (the overall TAC for a given species).

37. Once Member States have been allocated their share of the TAC, it is up to each government to distribute its quota allocation among national fishing interests as it sees fit. Different approaches prevail in different Member States, for example with regard to whether quotas are allocated to individual fishermen, producers' organisations or cooperatives, and whether fishermen can hire or purchase quota from other fishermen. In the UK, national quotas are distributed on the basis of "Fixed Quota Allocation" (FQA) units held by groups of vessels or producers' organisations. These FQA units are based on vessels' historic landings during a fixed reference period (1994 to 1996 for most stocks). In practice, vessels and producers' organisations can arrange to swap and lease quotas from each other during the year.

38. Member States can also swap and lease quotas in-year (i.e. between December Councils). At the end of the year, however, the original distribution—based on the principle of relative stability—will prevail when TACs are set again for the following year.

The Fisheries Sector

39. Not least owing to the challenges identified at the outset, the regulatory regime in place to govern fisheries in EU waters is intricate and extensive relative to the number of people involved in catching and processing fish, and the economic significance of those industries. The fishing (catch) sector's contribution to the Gross National Product of EU Member States is generally less than 1 per cent. Despite this, the fishing industry has a symbolic importance much greater than its economic significance in maritime nations, not least due to its importance in coastal communities. The EU fishing industry also has a leading position in world markets, as Box 5 illustrates.

BOX 5

Production and Trade in Fish and Fisheries Products

The EU is one of the largest fish producers in the world, producing almost 7 million tonnes of fish from marine fisheries and aquaculture in 2005 (82 per cent capture fisheries and 18 per cent aquaculture). This amounts to around 4 per cent of the world total in that year.

EU Member States are net importers of fish and fisheries products: they exported over 2 million tonnes of fish and fish products in 2006, and imported a further 6 million tonnes.

This imbalance between imports and exports is replicated in the United Kingdom, where 416 thousand tonnes of fish and fish products were exported in 2006, while imports rose to 753 thousand tonnes. In net terms, exported fish species were mostly mackerel, herring and salmon, while cod, haddock, tuna, shrimps and prawns were predominant among imported species.

UK vessels landed 614 thousand tonnes of fish and shellfish in 2006, worth £610 million—this represented a decrease in volume, but an increase in value over the previous year. The Scottish fleet's share of these landings was 62 per cent, while the English and Welsh fleets accounted for 32 per cent of landings, and the Northern Irish fleet for the remaining 6 per cent.

40. A study[13] produced for the European Commission in 2006 showed that the catch, processing and aquaculture sectors combined usually provide less than 1 per cent of total employment in each EU Member State. Fishermen in Spain, Greece and Italy accounted for almost 60 per cent of those working in the catch sector in 2002/2003, with France and Portugal each representing a further 10 per cent of the EU total. The fish processing industry employed the largest number of people in Spain, France and the United Kingdom, followed by Germany and Poland. Employment in aquaculture was highest in France and Spain.

41. At regional level, however, the fisheries sector can constitute a significant source of employment in coastal communities where there are few alternative economic opportunities. The most fisheries-dependent regions in this respect are to be found in Spain (Galicia), France (Bretagne, Poitou-Charentes, Basse-Normandie), the United Kingdom (North East Scotland), Portugal (Algarve, Azores), and Greece as well as in Estonia, Latvia and Poland among the new Member States.

42. In the UK, 12,934 fishermen were (self-) employed in 2006, down 32 per cent in ten years. Of these, 55 per cent were based in England and Wales, 40 per cent in Scotland and just under 5 per cent in Northern Ireland. More people were employed in the UK's fish processing industry, which registered 18,180 employees in 2006, across around 570 businesses.[14]

43. Box 6 outlines the size and structure of the EU and UK fishing fleets.

BOX 6

Size and Structure of the Catch Industry

The EU fishing fleet comprised around 87,000 vessels in 2006, with Greece, Spain and Italy contributing 52 per cent of the total. UK vessels made up just under 8 per cent of the EU total, while Portugal and France accounted for a further 10 per cent and 9 per cent respectively.

In 2006, the UK fishing industry had 6,372 fishing vessels—a reduction of 21 per cent compared to the size of the UK fleet in 1996. The majority of vessels (4,896) were under ten metres in length, down 13 per cent over the previous ten years. The over ten metre sector had shrunk by 40 per cent since 1996, to 1,476 vessels.

The inshore fleet has the smallest boats, many of them under 10 metres in length. The whitefish fleet—pursuing demersal (sea bed) stocks—is composed of boats of intermediate size, typically between 20 and 25 metres in length. The pelagic fleet—pursuing fish that shoal in the upper layers of the sea—boasts the largest vessels, most of which are over 50 metres long.

Earnings per vessel tend to reflect vessel size, even thought the larger vessels catch the lower-value species.

1 A consultation paper was published by the Commission on 28 February 2008 and is available here: http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/cfp/governance/consultations/consultation_280208_en.pdf Back

2 Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), signed in 1982, Contracting Parties are obliged to co-operate. Back

3 By-catch refers to any organism that is caught in addition to the target fish. Back

4 Demersal fish stocks live near the bottom of the sea (e.g. cod, haddock, halibut). Pelagic fish stocks live in the upper layers of the sea (e.g. tuna, herring, mackerel). Back

5 Council Regulation 170/83 EC. Back

6 COM (2002) 181, 28 May 2002. Back

7 Council Regulation 2371/2002 and Council Regulation 2369/2002, respectively. Back

8 Council Regulation 2371/2002, Article 1. Back

9 Select Committee on the European Union, 25^th Report (2002-03): Progress of Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (HL 109) Paragraph 15. Back

11 Council Regulation 768/2005 EC of 26 April 2005. Back

13 http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/publications/studies/employment_study_2006.pdf Back