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This cover letter, co-signed by 30 organisations active in the EU and/or the UK across various seabasins, was sent to Commissioner Costas Kadis, accompanying our joint Briefing Series with recommendations to the EU and the UK on fishing opportunities for 2026 and beyond. In parallel, a similar letter was sent to the UK Minister of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. In these twin letters, we urge both the EU and the UK to end overfishing of shared stocks and invest in stock and ecosystem resilience in the face of climate change and other mounting pressures, by setting precautionary, ecosystem-based fishing opportunities well below the best available scientific single-stock advice. This is not only essential for healthy fish populations and ecosystems, but also to secure the socio-economic future of thriving fisheries and coastal communities.
The letter to the Commissioner emphasises some of the key points discussed in more detail in the joint Briefing Series, namely the following:
Set catch limits well below the best available scientific single-stock advice for maximum catches (also see our Cover Briefing), with a view to restoring and maintaining fish populations above healthy and productive levels;
Respect the legally binding safeguards in the EU’s Multi-Annual Plans (which are part of Retained EU Law in the UK) against dangerous stock declines below the level where reproductive capacity bay be reduced (also see Briefings 2 and 3);
Recognise shortcomings in the scientific single-stock advice on fishing opportunities and the EU’s and UK’s requests (also see Briefing 3 and this letter to Commissioner Kadis on the topic)
Fully implement the western Mediterranean multiannual plan (also see Briefing 7);
Apply a precautionary and ecosystem-based approach when setting fishing opportunities, with special attention to mixed fisheries and interspecies dynamics (also see Briefings 5 and 6);
Eliminate bycatch and discards, increase selectivity, incentivize low impact fishing through quota allocation based on environmental and social criteria, and diligently control fisheries (also see Briefings 6, 8 and 9); and