Evidence on Common Fisheries Policy Reform

Written evidence presented to the Scottish Parliament’s Rural Affairs and Environment Committee

Reform of the CFP is timely, not only because the 2002 reform has done little to alleviate overfishing and its wider ecological footprint, but also because of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), which sets a challenging new context for fisheries management. The Directive requires that Europe’s seas achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) by 2020 at the latest, and requires that reform of the CFP does not impede the delivery of GES, and therefore ‘must take account of the environmental impacts of fishing’…