Members of the European Parliament adopted several amendments to support data collection, including data about recreational fisheries. Despite the amendments intended to grant at least 25% of the Union financial support to data collection have been rejected, the Plenary vote backed the Commission’s proposal of at least 15% of the Union financial support to be allocated to each Member States for data collection.
The reintroduction of subsidies for renewal and modernisation of the European fishing fleets has been strongly criticised by environmental NGOs as those subsidies would contribute, in their views, to fleet overcapacity and overfishing.
The European Council is still working on the proposal and should adopt its own position in the following months. Negotiations with the European Parliament to agree on the final text of the EMFF regulation will start in the second part of 2019.
MEPs agree on significant financial support increase for EU fisheries, European Parliament press release
