Fishing in the waters around the UK and other European Union countries is managed under the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), which aims to achieve a thriving and sustainable European fishing industry.

You can find out more about:

• Fish stocks – how they are managed under the CFP
• Discards – how we are tackling the problem
• Finding a better way to fish

Common Fisheries Policy reform

The current Common Fisheries Policy is broken. It has not delivered its key objective of an economically viable fishing industry which minimises impacts on marine ecosystems. The health of fish stocks and profitability of fishing businesses have deteriorated, while centralised bureaucracy has proliferated. The UK is calling for radical reform leading to a simplified, regionalised CFP with incentives for fishermen to operate sustainably and profitably. Priorities include:

• Discards/catch quota – we are determined to end the wasteful practice of discards by focusing on catches, not just landings.
• Regionalisation – we must get rid of micro-management and over-detailed central regulation, and allow Member States to work together regionally to implement appropriate management measures;
• Managing quota rights so that fishermen are able to plan for the long term, and benefit from improving stocks;
• Integration – it is not in the fishermen’s interests to have a collision of fisheries with environmental policies, so we must integrate the CFP with environmental policy objectives.

These measures and the work on domestic fisheries management reform will help make the whole fleet economically sustainable and provide greater benefits to coastal  communities through tourism and enhanced local/regional sales of fish, building on our Fishing for the Markets project.

UK action on CFP reform

In April 2009 the European Commission issued a Green Paper to stimulate debate on the reform of the CFP. We share the Commission’s vision for European fisheries in 2020 set out in the Green Paper (page 4, section 1).

The Commission published its draft regulatory proposals, that took on board many of the UK’s comments, on 13 July 2011. You can read the Minister’s initial response.

We will continue to work with all those involved to develop our approach to this crucial reform. We issued a consultation on the Commission’s reform proposals on 10 August 2011 and a summary of the responses is now available.

The draft regulation is now subject to detailed discussions and negotiations between Member States, the European Commission and the European Parliament during the next 18 months.

The final regulation is due to be agreed by both the Council of Fisheries Ministers and the European Parliament in time to come into force on 1 January 2013.

Key documents

• Consultation on European Commission proposals to reform the CFP and the Common Organisation of the Markets (CMO) in fishery and aquaculture products (including summary of responses)
• The European Commission proposals to reform the CFP and the Common Organisation of the Markets in fishery and aquaculture products
• UK response to the Green Paper submitted in December 2009
• Achieving sustainable fisheries through CFP reform discussion paper
• Summary of the responses to the discussion paper
• Feedback from the meetings on the discussion paper around the coast
• Green Paper on CFP reform
• Fisheries 2027 – a long-term vision for sustainable fisheries