Decision 2023/2812 - EU position in the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources - Main contents

Official Journal

of the European Union

EN

Series L

2023/2812

15.12.2023

By Council Decision 81/691/EEC (1), the Union concluded the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (‘CAMLR Convention’), which entered into force on 7 April 1982 and established the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Poland and Sweden are also Contracting Parties to the CAMLR Convention. Greece, Netherlands and Finland are Contracting Parties to the CAMLR Convention but not Members of the CCAMLR.

Pursuant to paragraph 1 of Article IX of the CAMLR Convention, the CCAMLR is responsible for the adoption of conservation measures at its annual meetings designed to ensure the conservation of Antarctic marine living resources, including their rational use. Such measures may become binding upon the Union.

Regulation (EU) No 1380/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council (2) provides that the Union is to ensure that fishing and aquaculture activities are environmentally sustainable in the long term and are managed in a way that is consistent with the objectives of achieving economic, social and employment benefits, and of contributing to the availability of food supplies. It also provides that the Union is to apply the precautionary approach to fisheries management and is to aim to ensure that exploitation of living marine biological resources restores and maintains the population of harvested species above levels which can produce the maximum sustainable yield. It further provides that the Union is to take management and conservation measures based on the best available scientific advice, to support the development of scientific knowledge and advice, to gradually eliminate discards and to promote fishing methods that contribute to more selective fishing and the avoidance and reduction, as far as possible, of unwanted catches, to fishing with low impact on marine ecosystem and fishery resources. Furthermore, Regulation (EU) No 1380/2013 specifically provides that those objectives and principles are to be applied by the Union in the conduct of its external fisheries relations.

In line with the Communications from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions ‘EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 Bringing nature back into our lives’, ‘Forging a climate-resilient Europe — the new EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change’ and ‘A Farm to Fork Strategy for a fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system’, it is essential to protect nature and reverse the degradation of ecosystems. Climate change and loss of biodiversity are not to jeopardise the availability of the goods and services that healthy marine ecosystems provide to fishers, coastal communities and humanity at large.

The Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions ‘A European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy’ refers to specific measures to reduce plastics and marine pollution as well as the loss or abandonment at sea of fishing gear. Furthermore, the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the...