On the morning of Tuesday 13 December, after two days of negotiations, the European Union fisheries ministers reached a political agreement on fishing opportunities for 2023 in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Black Sea.
“More than ever, the negotiations were extremely intense, but we were all determined to reach an agreement that is both ambitious and balanced”, said The Commissioner for Fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius.
To read his statement: https://aeur.eu/f/4mv
For eels, the EU Council decided to ban recreational fishing and to extend the closure of all commercial eel fisheries in the marine and adjacent brackish waters of the Northeast Atlantic and the Mediterranean from three to six months in 2023 in a differentiated manner to take account of the different migration periods in the different sea basins.
Thus, Member States will be able to adapt the closed season in different fishing areas to take into account their specificities as well as the temporal and geographical migration patterns of eels in the glass eel and silver eel life stages. The Commissioner welcomed the fact that the ministers had “recognised the urgency of the situation. We have signed a joint declaration and committed ourselves to addressing this situation in a comprehensive manner”.
In the Kattegat, the cod TAC is 97 tonnes for unavoidable catches of cod in other fisheries.
In the Bay of Biscay and Iberian waters, a 10% increase in the hake TAC is decided. In addition, the TAC for anglerfish will be increased by 12% and for megrim by 33%. The TAC for Norway lobster will be increased by 19% in the Bay of Biscay.
The European Commission notes that the agreement represents “a value of €3.5 billion for 187 EU fleet segments with significant fishing activity in the Skagerrak and North-East Atlantic”.
Mediterranean. Ministers agreed to reduce fishing effort by 7% for trawlers in the Western Mediterranean, in line with the obligation to reach maximum sustainable yield (MSY) for these stocks by 2025.
In addition, the ministers renewed the ‘compensation mechanism’ introduced in 2022: it allows 3.5% extra days to be granted to eligible trawlers as an incentive to improve gear selectivity or area closures. The EU Council froze the fishing effort of longliners at the 2022 level and reduced the TACs for blue and red shrimp in the Alboran Sea, the Balearic Islands, northern Spain and the Gulf of Lion by 5% (and -3% for blue and red shrimp and giant red shrimp from the island of Corsica, the Ligurian Sea, the Tyrrhenian Sea and the island of Sardinia).
In the Black Sea, the current turbot TAC is extended to 2023 (with a carry-over of the unused turbot quota).
Provisional TACs. The EU Council has set TACs for stocks shared trilaterally with Norway and the UK, all at the level of maximum sustainable yield.
As consultations on bilaterally shared stocks with Norway and the UK are still ongoing, the EU Council adopted preliminary TACs for these stocks for the first three months of 2023. This contingency plan ensures that fishing can continue smoothly in the new year if bilateral agreements with the UK and Norway are not reached before the end of December. TACs are generally set at 25% of the 2022 TAC.
Exceptions include several stocks that were disproportionately fished earlier this year and some stocks for which scientific advice for 2023 predicts significant decreases or increases.
Link to the TAC table: https://aeur.eu/f/4ms (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)