The EU is the world’s second largest fishing power after China. With a fleet of over 91,000 vessels, the EU yields over 7.5 million tons of fish from fisheries and aquaculture each year.

As part of its commitment to ensure responsible fishing and aquaculture, the EU’s common fisheries policy, reformed in 2002, is designed to secure the future of the fishing industry. The reformed CFP incorporates the long-term goals of maintaining safe levels of adult fish in EU waters, keeping parity between fishing fleet capacity and overall fish-populations and enforcing fishing rules equitably everywhere in the Union.

During the period 2007-2013, the European Fisheries Fund has a budget of €3.8 billion to provide grants for the sustainable development of the fisheries sector. The member states will decide how to allocate the funds between different priorities, with greater emphasis on funding of fish stock recovery plans, inland fisheries and environmentally-friendly aquaculture.

In October 2007, the Commission presented a Communication on the main elements of a new European integrated maritime policy, recognizing, for the first time, the need for a holistic approach for regulating seas and oceans. The document includes founding principles and main objectives, the required governance framework and appropriate tools for integrated policy making.

In December 2008, the EU Fisheries Council agreed unanimously on Total Allowable Catches and Quotas for 2009. These aim to balance the demands of economic conditions and fish resources, applying to EU vessels and EU waters in need of catch limitations.

The discussions were guided by current recovery and management plans, earlier commitments within international fisheries organisations (such as ICCAT for bluefin tuna), and the Commission's general policy of June 2008.

Agreements include: specific measures for cod, haddock and whiting to the West of Scotland (to prevent the need for closure), new catch limitations for ray and skate in certain areas, separate TACs for cod in the Eastern Channel, and technical measures to reduce the number of discards.

In September 2010, Commisioner Damanaki presented a Commission proposal to maintain financial support to the EU's Integrated Maritime Policy, established in 2007, for the period 2011-2013. The proposed regulation, with funding to the tune of €50mn, would have six targets:

• Promoting integrated maritime governance at European, national and regional level so as to ensure that decision making is not centred around one single policy, but takes a broader view of all the actions that impact on the seas;

• Pinpointing the specific challenges and needs of European sea basins in relation to the various individual sectoral policies;

• Developing maritime spatial planning and integrated coastal zone management to provide a stable planning framework at sea and ensure that its development is sustainable and economically viable;

• Developing a proper marine knowledge infrastructure leading to reliable and high-quality marine data for both public authorities and businesses, reducing the operational costs for marine data users and fostering competition and innovation.

• Developing a common Information Sharing Environment which brings together all the sector-specific surveillance and monitoring systems to give a comprehensive "marine awareness" picture, so that national authorities are better equipped to monitor activities and react to unlawful ones or to threats at sea.

• Promoting sustainable economic growth, innovation and employment in maritime sectors and coastal regions, thereby meeting the objectives set out in the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.