The European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee has voted overwhelmingly in favour of an agreement to revise the EU’s Fisheries Control Regulation, which can increase transparency around catches at sea and combat illegal activities and hidden overfishing.
Five years after the initial proposal by the European Commission to modernise the EU’s fisheries control system, negotiators from the European Parliament and Council of the EU reached a deal last month, which the Fisheries Committee has now voted on, with twenty votes for and eight against.
New rules on the margin of tolerance – which sets the limit on how much fishing vessels are allowed to misrepresent their catch – include important safeguards that if applied correctly should ensure catches are reported more effectively. This is crucial to curtail overfishing of vulnerable species, such as yellow- and bigeye tuna in the Indian Ocean. New measures on electronic tracking and traceability will give a boost to transparency in fisheries allowing the EU to effectively fight illegal fishing.
You can read the proposal here.