EP Think Tank Briefing: Multiannual plan for Baltic fisheries

Multiannual plans for fisheries management are an essential tool to ensure the sustainable exploitation of fish stocks and marine ecosystems. They also offer increased predictability to fishermen in the long run. In October 2014, the European Commission proposed a multiannual plan for stocks of cod, herring and sprat in the Baltic Sea and for the fisheries exploiting them. This Baltic multiannual and multispecies plan is the first proposed plan to build on the principles of the 2013 reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. Seen as a test case, it may have some spill-over effect on new proposals for multiannual plans, some of which are expected from the European Commission in the near future. The Council adopted its general approach on 20 April 2015, and the European Parliament voted on legislative amendments in plenary on 28 April, before referring the matter back to the Committee on Fisheries. After 10 months of difficult interinstitutional negotiations, a compromise was reached in March 2015 in trilogue discussions. The EP’s Committee on Fisheries endorsed the trilogue result on 19 April and the plenary should vote on the final outcome in June. This briefing updates an earlier edition, of February 2016: PE 577.969.