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03/11/14

Agriculture and Fisheries Council in Luxembourg: review of fishing effort management in Western Waters under the reform and freshwater aquaculture and inland fishery on the agenda

The Agriculture and Fisheries Council meets in Luxembourg. The Council hold a debate on the Commission's Communication on the review of the Western Waters regime , adopted in November 2010. The Western Waters regime is a very large-scale effort management system covering bottom fisheries (except deep-sea fisheries) in the North-East Atlantic, excluding the North Sea. Also, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Luxembourg and Slovakia presented a Joint Declaration on the future role of the freshwater aquaculture and inland fishery within the CFP reform.

Commissioner Maria Damanaki thanked the Hungarian Presidency and, in the margin of the Council, stated: "The Western Waters regime is very important and needs to be adopted to secure sustainability of our stocks". She added: "We are going to do our best to boost the aquaculture sector, in the framework of our proposal for the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. We need to develop more aquaculture projects, as fish is a particularly healthy and nutrient product and there is an increasing demand, which is now covered largely through imports. This means that the sector has the potential to grow and create jobs, in line with the Europe 2020 strategy. Finally, aquaculture is an alternative to overfishing and therefore can be seen as a conservation measure".

Watch the press conference

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