Setting of total allowable catches in the 2013 EU common fisheries policy reform: possible impacts

Fisheries in the European Union (EU) are managed through the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), which has been revised in 2013 to achieve Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) for all commercial exploited stocks and ban discards, amongst other aims. One of its core instruments to achieve stock conservation objectives in the North-East Atlantic are Total Allowable Catches (TACs). These are agreed annually by the Council of the EU, informed by scientific advice but usually based on perceived short-term socioeconomic impacts. The objective of this study was to analyse the influence of major policy decisions and consequent changes in the basis of scientific advice on TAC decisions. TACs set were compared to maximum advised catch levels between 2010 and 2017, in order to determine to what extent the EU adheres to scientific advice. The results show that EU fisheries ministers persistently set fishing opportunities above those given by MSY based scientific advice. Since 2010, 60% of the TACs analysed were constantly set above the advised levels, but departure from the advised tonnes peaked at around 40% in 2013, during the CFP negotiation, and again in 2017 due to the introduction of the landing obligation. More importantly, the observed decreasing trend of overfishing that had been achieved in Europe has been halted since 2011-2012. Finally, there was no impact of ICES' adoption of the MSY approach in EU TACs decision-making.