Press Release: Commission proposes to end waste of fisheries resources

The European Commission has adopted a communication on reducing unwanted catches and eliminating discards in European fisheries. Discarding is the practice of dumping overboard unwanted fish or other marine organisms which have been caught unintentionally. Discard rates in European fisheries vary widely, from negligible in some small-scale coastal fisheries, to up to 70-90% of the catches in some trawl fisheries. The proposed approach represents an innovation for the Common Fisheries Policy. It involves the adoption of a progressive fishery-by-fishery discard ban and the setting of standards for maximum acceptable by-catch. This will provide an incentive to industry to devise ways to meeting the by-catch targets, rather than through series of measures to regulate landings. In short, the incentive would be for fishers to take from the sea only what can be marketed. The debate on achieving these aims will continue till the end of 2007 and the first proposed measures could be tabled in 2008.

European Commission: DG Communication: MEMO/07/120 http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/07/120&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

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