Advice and Recommendations

In this joint letter the Pelagic and Baltic Sea AC express their concern regarding the recent decision to change reference points outside the expert groups that usually calculate reference points.

The Commission requests information on the implementation of the landing obligation.

The Pelagic AC requests a benchmark meeting for Western horse mackerel by early 2017 at the latest.

The Pelagic AC asks for verification of precautionary fishing mortalities and associated biomass triggers.

The Pelagic AC requests clarfication from the European Commission on questioning the Fmsy value presented by ICES for blue whiting.

This letter presents a reaction to the consultation process by the Member States regional groups on the development of discard plans.

In this letter to the European Commission the Pelagic AC asks for clarification regarding the possibility to directly access EMFF funding for pilot projects and studies to be carried out within Advisory Councils.

In this letter to ICES the chairman of Working Group II raises a number of issues that should be dealt with at the herring benchmark in 2015.

The Pelagic AC requests clarification from the European Commission on how it can access direct EMFF funding for carrying out the necessary work to map herring spawning grounds in collaboration with ICES.

The Pelagic AC submitted a response to the revisions put forward by the Commission at the inter-AC meeting on May 5th proposing classification criteria for potential members in one of the two stakeholder categories, as well as a proposed advice template document for AC advice to the Commission. With regard to the proposed advice template document, the Pelagic AC had requested that a certain degree of flexibility would remain possible. The PelAC also remarked on the over-emphasis of minority statements in the template, which should be avoided. The Pelagic AC finally suggested additional phrasing in the proposed criteria for the classification of new members in the appropriate stakeholder categories, to remove ambiguity in the event that other economic users of the sea than the fisheries value chain would consider AC membership in the future.

The PelAC recognises the Commission’s consideration and uptake of our suggestions provided in this submission in relation to this revision, and is pleased that these main comments are well reflected in the final proposal.