The EU, Norway and the Faroe Islands reached an agreement for the monitoring, control and surveillance of shared pelagic fisheries stocks in the North East Atlantic, the European Commission announced on Monday 4 May.
Unfortunately, the Icelandic and Greenlandic delegations were unable to commit themselves to common control measures for pelagic stocks.
The agreement concerns mackerel, horse mackerel, blue whiting and herring.
It is the first dedicated agreement on fisheries control and is, according to the Commission, “a major step in progressively achieving a level playing field on control and management of these fish stocks”.
The fish stocks covered by the agreement are subject to negotiations between countries each year for their total allowable catches (TACs).
The three signatories commit to adopt control measures for these fisheries in order to avoid discards of fish at sea.
In 2019, the landing obligation entered fully into force.
Several measures will be mandatory under the agreement: real-time access to weighing data, camera surveillance of landing and processing facilities. In addition, an ambitious plan to test Remote Electronic Monitoring systems on board fishing vessels, such as cameras and sensors, will be implemented.
See the text of the agreement: https://bit.ly/3c5bU5I (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)