The Government presents the sustainable fishing Royal Decree project

The Agriculture, Fishing and Alimentation Ministry has presented the Royal Decree project which regulates fishing resources management measures to a public hearing, in development to the 5/2023 Law of sustainable fishing and fishing investigation.

The new norm looks for unifying and harmonizing fishing regulation, guaranteeing legal security of the field and balancing environmental sustainability with economic and social performance of the fishing activity. Amongst the main innovations, clear norms about access to resources, assignment to fishing possibilities and transmission mechanisms, temporary and definitive, between vessels, are added.

The text expects the creation of tools to optimize the quotas, compensating captures excesses, establishing precautionary fishing closures and fixating captures and landing limits. The management alongside the quotes on the vessels’s behalf is also regulated, and the possibility of fishing reserves to avoid over-fishing or easing exchanges with other member States of the EU is introduced.

In addition, the technical characteristics of minors fishing gears in different drafts are updated and norms related to recreational maritime fishing are modified, in line with the mos recent European normative. The decree studies, as well, the compulsion of using electronic resources for the management and tracking of these quotas, relying on already existing systems such as the aboard electronic diary and the localization of vessels.

The Ministry points out that the norm answers to the principle of proportionality, reducing administrative loads and improving the efficiency of public management. The fishing field and the autonomic communities have been consulted in its elaboration, and now have a new period of participation in the public audience paperwork.