December 18, 2013 — The amount of fish that can be caught in Europe within scientifically recommended levels inched upwards under a deal made in Brussels on Wednesday, but campaigners said the agreement still marked only "tepid" progress towards sustainable fishing.
European ministers who have been negotiating since Monday on fish quotas agreed that 27 of the 50 stocks that scientists provide advice on would be fished at sustainable yields in 2014, up from 25 in 2013. It is the last time quotas will be agreed in this way, with new reforms coming into force next year.
The EU's fisheries commissioner, Maria Damanaki, said the meeting had pre-emptively adopted the conservationist spirit of the reforms that will guide quotas from 2015 onwards.
"I would like to say to you that I'm really very happy, because this year the ministers they have decided to implement the reform in advance," said Damanaki. "So the new fisheries policy is already here. All the components of the new reform are already here.
"When the [population] trend is stable or positive, we will be able to have small increases [in catch limits]. When the trend was going down I have insisted that we need to reduce the quotas and the council has done that."
Green groups said the results from the meeting showed improvement, but there was little to indicate member states had voluntarily embraced sustainability.
Read the full story at The Guardian