Adapting EU fisheries legislation to the landing obligation

Briefing 23-04-2015

The landing obligation, designed to end the practice of 'discarding' fish, is a central component of the reformed Common Fisheries Policy adopted in December 2013. In order to review the specific measures in current legislation which conflict with the landing obligation, the Commission has put forward an 'omnibus proposal' which provides a package of amendments to eight existing regulations. The changes proposed in the omnibus regulation concern fisheries technical measures and control rules. On technical measures, the proposal removes the existing provisions which forbid landing of fish of a certain size or species, and requires that these catches are landed and counted against quotas. The proposal would also modify the current control system with respect to the application of the landing obligation. The EP Committee on Fisheries voted on the proposal on 3 December 2014 and a political agreement between the Parliament and the Council was reached on 29 January 2015. The compromise text, approved by Coreper and by the Committee on Fisheries, is scheduled to go to first reading vote in plenary on 27 April 2015. A more recent edition of this document is available. Find it by searching by the document title at this address: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/home.html