Brussels, 18/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 11 July, the European Commission uploaded an (external) study on the implementation of the European regulation aiming to fight illegal fishing.
This study (http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/documentation/studies/iuu-regulation-application/index_en.htm ) shows, amongst other things, that 24 member states (92% of the 26 countries which had filled in the questionnaires at the time the study was published) have done everything needed to implement the regulation. On average, Spain and the United Kingdom use the highest number of agents to verify and validate catch certificates. Only three countries (Spain, France and Lithuania) stated that they had had problems with third-country fishing vessels in implementing articles 6 (notifications) and 7 (authorisations) of the regulation. Six countries (Cyprus, Denmark, Spain, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Portugal) reported that they had identified 83 infringements. 75 of these were reported by Spain.
As regards sanctions, the highest numbers of import refusals were reported by the United Kingdom, Spain, France and Poland. The main reasons behind these refusals were the absence of catch certificates (UK), invalidated catch certificates (Spain and Poland) and the wrong species listed (France and the UK). (LC)