European Union Council has made first formal discussion on the upcoming CFP reform in which Spain Presidency Chair Elena Espinosa stressed that they were only at “the very beginning”, and Commissioner Maria Damanaki took the opportunity to once more reiterate the strong need for better sustainability. Damanaki said that she has two figures to illustrate this.
She continue saying that by 2022, only 8 of our 136 species will be healthy. By the same year, one third of our stocks will be threatened by collapse. She told that it is now difficult to continue with the same policy. She said that there is an urgent need to end micromanagement from Brussels. We will have to find solutions on a regional basis.
Spain’s Fisheries Minister Elena Espinosa summed up the Commission Communication in seven “pillars”, the first of which she mentioned establishing sustainable catch levels and “stable conditions for fishing agents, avoiding unnecessary change”. She underlines that CFP reform has to take both sustainability and “socioeconomic and environmental aspects” into account.
