Report | October 3, 2018

Joint NGO priorities on the Multi-annual Plan for Western Waters

We call on MEPs to support the Commission’s proposal to:

  • Ensure that exploitation of living marine biological resources restores and maintains populations of harvested species above levels which can produce the Maximum SustainableYield (MSY) (Articles 3.1, 7.1 and 7.2);
  • Contribute to the elimination of discards by avoiding and reducing, as far as possible, unwanted catches (Article 3.2);
  • Implement the ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management and ensure coherence with the objectives of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), particularly achieving Good Environmental Status (GES) by 2020, and the Birds and Habitats Directives (Articles 3.3 and 3.4).

We call on MEPs to amend the proposal to ensure that:

  • Recovery targets to restore stocks to levels above those capable of producing MSY apply to all harvested stocks, with corresponding safeguards and specific timeframes;
  • Ranges of fishing mortality are limited to those that will meet the requirements in Article 2.2 of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) for all harvested stocks. For stocks with MSY-based reference points, this means that FMSY should be the upper limit;
  • Measures to reduce or eliminate specific regional impacts of the fisheries on seabirds, marine mammals, and habitats are explicitly set out in the plan;
  • Measures to implement specific regional aspects of the landing obligation are explicitly set out in the plan;
  • Effective and robust monitoring and enforcement of provisions are highlighted as key conditions for the successful delivery of Western Waters Multi-annual Plan (MAP) objectives.