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Welcome to European Parliamentary Research Service podcast on fisheries.

If you like eating fish, or even if you don't, you'll probably know that fish is not an infinite resource.

That's why the European Union spends so much time and energy trying to ensure the European fishing industry remains sustainable,

so the fishermen can continue fishing and we can still have fish on our plates in the future.

What to know how it does that? Stay with us.

Ever heard of the CFP?

No, it's not a football team, but the common fisheries policy of the EU. Now, what does it stand for?

Well, as solely responsible for the conservation of the EU's marine biological resources,

the common fisheries policy is basically a set of rules for managing European fishing fleets

and for conserving fish stocks in the long term. It gives all European fishing fleets equitable access to

EU waters and fishing grounds and allows fishermen to compete fairly. It also applies to the EU's

international fisheries relations and to bilateral agreements signed with third countries. Since it was

introduced in 1983, it has gone through successive updates, the most recent of which happened in 2013, with the aim of ensuring that EU fisheries remain environmentally, economically and socially sustainable.

The reform introduced a major milestone by setting the target of ensuring exploitation of all stocks is at sustainable levels by 2020.

To achieve this goal, the adoption of multi-annual plans that define the framework for the long-term management of stocks by fishery and sea basin has become a priority.

To end the shameful practice of discarding fish back into the sea, this latest reform also introduced a landing obligation for all catches to be implemented by 2019, as well as the regionalisation of decision

making, with the possibility to adopt conservation measures in a specific sea basin based on

joint recommendations by the Member States concerned. Although well-funded, implementation

of these reforms has been a major challenge of the past few years. So while fish stocks in the

North East Atlantic are effectively recovering, the same cannot So while fish stocks in the Northeast Atlantic are

effectively recovering, the same cannot be said for stocks in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea,

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