Name: Committee on Fisheries Ordinary meeting
Uploaded: 2026-07-15T12:30:00+00:00
Duration: 8175 s

06:10 - 08:39

Speaker 1

Good afternoon, dear colleagues. Let us start the after lunch part session. But before we start our next point, I would like to welcome, and in this case it's my own group that is coming from Azores, at the back of this meeting. So thank you so much for coming, a group of 50 young people from Azores, different islands, that came here to understand the functioning of the European institutions, specifically all the fisheries, agriculture. We had a lot of meetings already today, but it's a great honor to have you here, especially on a day that I'm chairing, as an Azorean, I'm chairing the...

It was not intended, but it was a good, a good coincidence. So thank you so much for coming and all the committee welcomes you here. Thank you so much. So, now we pass, I'm pleased to introduce on point nine of our agenda, workshop from the Policy Department for Regional Development, Agriculture and Fisheries on cross-border cooperation in fisheries management and its best practices from the Western Waters, the Mediterranean Sea and the Baltic Sea. The Policy Department has released three new studies highlighting how cross-border cooperation is shaping more sustainable fisheries management across Europe's seas, from coordinated action on sardine and anchovy in the Western Waters to the GFCM's collaborative measures in the Mediterranean and the untapped potential of Baltic Sea Fisheries Forum and the Baltic Sea Advisory Council in the Baltic Sea.

Together they show how stronger cooperation can drive healthier fish stocks and deliver on EU sustainability goals. Without further ado, I would like to introduce the experts who prepared the study and who will present its key findings and recommendations. We are pleased to welcome today three speakers who will present the study they co-authored: Mrs. Cristina Pita, on my left side, welcome, and from Madeira also, so Azores and Madeira are here very well represented; Mr. Matteo Chiarini; and Mrs. Emma Bjorkvik. So, Mrs. Cristina Pita, I now give you the floor to present the study on best practices from the Western Waters and you will have around 15 minutes. The floor is yours, please.

08:39 - 12:39

Speaker 2

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for having me here. So I'll be presenting the case of the Western Waters. Next, please.

There are four components to this study. I'll start with a general introduction to the study, followed by a description of the cross-border cooperation in the Western Waters, then a detailed overview of two cases of best practices in cross-border cooperation, and finally the recommendations. Next, please. Next, yes. Fisheries governance in the Western Waters must address the fundamental challenge that many stocks are transboundary, highly migratory and distributed across multiple national jurisdictions.

So as such, the sustainable exploitation of these stocks requires a coordination amongst national administrations, the scientific bodies and also the fishing sectors of these particular regions. Within the EU, cross-border fisheries cooperation is primarily established under the Common Fisheries Policy and structured around common conservation rules like the total allowable catch, technical measures, joint monitoring and control measures. The 2013 reform of the Common Fisheries Policy introduced the principle of regionalisation, which allows the Member States that share a sea basin to jointly design fisheries management measures for that particular sea basin. Next, please. So the aim of this study was to examine the mechanisms that enable cross-border cooperation in the management of shared fisheries resources in the Western Waters.

The purpose was to extract lessons and good practices and then provide informed practical evidence-based recommendations to the European Parliament. We deliberately concentrated in an in-depth analysis of two cases of good practices in bilateral cooperation: the Iberian sardine by Portugal and Spain, and the management of the Bay of Biscay anchovy by Spain and France. Next, please. Yes. So starting with the, I will start with some general information on the cross-border cooperation in the Western Waters.

So there is, the governance of the shared fish resources in the Western Waters is very diverse and is multi-level. There are three main types of instruments that are used to support cross-border cooperation in the region. There are bilateral or multilateral fisheries agreements. These establish the legal and institutional framework for cooperation between states, covering access to waters, quota allocations, financial contributions and monitoring.

There are also multi-annual management plans adopted under the Common Fisheries Policy, and these set the long-term objectives and stock-specific harvest control rules. And finally, there are joint coordination mechanisms and technical measures that provide practical operational rules to align management actions between neighboring countries, so very good for the day-to-day management of the fishery. Despite this diversity in types of instruments, only a few fisheries have successfully combined the three elements into a single operational framework. And here is where the Iberian sardine and the Bay of Biscay come to play. They are good examples of such full integration.

Next, please. Next, please. I will provide some detail on these cases of best practice. I will start with the example of the sardine. We started in the study by looking at the implementation of the long-term management plan to try and understand the process, which is kind of a complex process.