With the goal to ensure that fishing activities in the Baltic are conducted in a sustainable and economically viable way that will not place unnecessary strain on the environment, the European Parliament has adopted a multiannual plan for the stocks of cod, herring and sprat in the Baltic Sea and the fisheries exploiting those stocks.
Expressed in terms of fishing mortality and/or targeted stock size, the plan will set an acceptable mortality baseline for cod, herring and sprat, and allow the EU Council to impose limits on the size of catches for each of these fish.
Although a management plan for Baltic Sea cod stocks had been in place since 2007, the stocks of herring and sprat had not been subject to a management plan. The “Multiannual plan for Baltic fisheries” is the first Common Fisheries Policy regional plan that accounts for how fish populations interact. Cod populations affect other fish for example: They eat both herring and sprat.
The European Parliament also voted in support of a recovery scheme that introduces international guidelines on sustainable bluefin tuna fishing into EU law and aims to tilt the scales away from industrial trawlers to smaller, more sustainable fishing enterprises.