With only eleven months to go before the EU's deadline to end overfishing, the NGO Our Fish denounces the fact that EU Member States will fish 312,000 tonnes more in 2019 than recommended by scientific advice in the North-East Atlantic, in a report by the New Economics Foundation published on Monday 11 February.
Entitled Landing the Blame, this report shows that Sweden leads the ranking of bad pupils, with 52.4% of quotas above scientific advice, followed by the United Kingdom (24.3%) and Ireland (21.7%). In terms of tonnage, the United Kingdom will catch 106,925 tonnes more than recommended, ahead of Denmark (49,914 tonnes).
Analyses show that between 2001 and 2018, two thirds of the total allowable catches (TACs) were set above the tonnages recommended by scientific advice, Our Fish comments.
"This wilful overfishing, agreed upon by EU fisheries ministers, panders to the short-term profits of a few, to the detriment of the long-term health of the marine environment and all EU citizens who are the owners of this priceless public resource", said Rebecca Hubbard, Programme Director at Our Fish.
See the report: https://bit.ly/2WUK195. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)