After months of discussion, the Black Sea countries pledged on Thursday 7 June to rebuild the sea’s fish stocks and to protect the ecological and economic wealth of the region.
The Sofia Declaration was signed by the European Commission, the ministers of three EU countries (Bulgaria, Romania and Greece) and eleven third countries (Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Georgia, Serbia, Montenegro, Moldova, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine).
The ministerial conference was organised by the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) and the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU.
European Fisheries Commissioner Karmenu Vella described the declaration as “a historic step towards more sustainable fisheries and aquaculture in the Black Sea”.
The declaration is the follow-up of the Bucharest Declaration of October 2016, transforming commitments into concrete actions with measurable deliverables on fighting illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, improvement in data collection and science, better fisheries management, and promotion of sustainable development of aquaculture. For the text of the Sofia Declaration, the link is: https://bit.ly/2M5d7gH (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)