Consensus meeting for the CEN workshop agreement on “Good practice guidelines for developing management recommendations for the EU fleet operating outside European waters”

One of many FarFish project outputs is the development a European voluntary CEN (European committee for standardization) standard that will be published as a CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) after going through an open CEN process. The focus of this standard is to provide guidelines for the development of so-called Management Recommendations for the EU fleet operating outside EU waters, which have been in development in the FarFish project over the past four years.

Creating Management Recommendations means following a framework where the fishing operators themselves are given new management responsibilities. They become directly involved in the management and decision-making process of the fishery in question, as they are given the responsibility to develop strategies to reach specific fisheries management objectives set by the relevant authorities. Such strategies are to contain a set of fisheries management measures that together will reach the authorities’ pre-defined objectives and will only be implemented given the authorities’ approval. A draft of the guidelines for making Management Recommendations has already been developed and tested within the FarFish project and serves as basis for the standard.

The CEN process for developing the CWA standard has taken 1 ½ years. During this time, FarFish researchers, in cooperation with the stakeholders that are voluntarily participating in the process, have developed a final version of the guidelines through numerous physical and online meetings. Draft versions of the standard have been made publicly available for feedback during the course of its development, including two official commenting phases that have been announced on the CEN and FarFish websites. The final draft of the standard is now available and will be discussed at a consensus meeting on November 25^th. The draft is available below. The aim of the consensus meeting is to finalise the CWA so that all members can agree on the final text. The consensus meeting is solely intended for those that have officially registered for the process.