
A letter to the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson
The NFFO has written in strong terms to the Prime Minister about the Government's portrayal of…
The National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations
The NFFO has written in strong terms to the Prime Minister about the Government's portrayal of…
With exports of fish and shellfish into the EU impeded by a range of border issues, Defra has…
Calais and Boulogne: despite the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the UK and the EU…
As the old year faded away, and the new year dawns, we lick our wounds and take stock of the tasks…
Some of the adjectives that will be in circulation within the UK fishing industry today, to…
A huge miscalculation lies at the heart of the EU’s negotiating strategy as we now head,…
Barrie Deas Chief Executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s…
The ninth round of negotiations with the EU has now concluded. It was followed by a weekend call…
The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisation has welcomed the signature of a…
Negotiations with the EU have bounced back centre stage, as time to reach an agreement of the…
It is difficult to glean much from the official statements made by the EU and the UK after each…
Of the eight objectives included in the Fisheries Bill, five of them relate to fishing…
One of the benefits of leaving the Common Fisheries Policy will be the potential to rethink and…
After last week’s round of negotiations, Michel Barnier singled out fisheries as one of…
The UK’s new status as an independent coastal state was widely recognised at a recent…
The tectonic plates of European and internal UK politics are shifting. One consequence of this…
The Independent has published an article on what the NFFO would consider a good outcome from the…
It may be a coincidence of timing but the day after the NFFO/SFF piled on the pressure with a major…
An “incredible level of support” for the fishing industry, was expressed at an…
The NFFO Team attend the the UK's Last December Council
After three rounds of talks with Norway, probably two more than necessary, during which the…
The election of a Conservative government, with a solid majority, means that the passage of the…
A final meeting with senior Defra officials, before government and industry delegations head…
North Sea cod is regarded by many as an iconic stock. After the gadoid outburst* in the 1960s and…
Leaving aside the possibility of a hiccup in these politically turbulent times, it is now…
A seminar in Brussels, organised recently by the European Commission, was held to take stock of…
It’s early days for the landing obligation, given the magnitude of the changes…
At a critical juncture in the Brexit process, around 70 parliamentarians gathered yesterday…
Both sides of the Christmas break have seen intense activity at Westminster as the Fisheries…
The last Fisheries Council in which the UK will participate as an EU member state concluded in…
December Council. Despite a four-year phase-in, it seems highly unlikely that the…
The Government is pulling out all the stops on fishing ahead of Tuesday’s critical vote…
The Withdrawal Agreement and Political Statement on the UK’s future relationship with…
Like many others, we are studying the text of the draft EU/UK withdrawal agreement to…
and a discussion of fishing post-Brexit, featured heavily on BBC Farming Today recently.
As the UK leaves the EU and therefore the Common Fisheries Policy, this Bill is an important…
The NFFO and the Scottish Fishermen’s Federations, recently joined forces for a lobby…
Thousands of flags and wheelhouse stickers in fishing ports across the country are delivering…
The NFFO’s new Chairman, Cornish fisherman, Andrew Pascoe, has said that he is…
At a recent meeting of the North Sea Advisory Council, the European Commission made the…
“We intend to Hold Government to Account on Brexit Commitments” A broad…
The NFFO comments on where we are after the EU and UK have agreed arrangements for the 21 month…
Against the background of high level discussions on where fisheries powers should be located…
On the cusp of the next and crucial round of negotiations on the UK’s departure from the…
As the cabinet debates the UK’s detailed positions on Brexit, the NFFO spells out why…
The European Commission has recently presented its positions on fisheries to the EU 27 member…
Over the next ten months, the shape of the UK’s future outside the EU should become…
This was a different kind of December Council in a number of important ways. Many delegations…
A strong NFFO team is present in Brussels for the December Council, which begins today in…
During the annual EU/Norway negotiations, this year in Bergen, the Norwegian delegation gave…
The EU and Norway delegations paused in their negotiations in Bergen for an annual reciprocal…
There are deep concerns within the fishing industry that an impasse between the European…
An NFFO delegation of 11 has recently returned from a study tour to Oslo and Bergen to learn in…
Sleeves were rolled up in London recently, as large teams from NFFO and DEFRA/Cefas got to grips…
Fisheries Minister, George Eustice, and a team of senior DEFRA officials used the Cornish…
The latest scientific advice on spurdog points to the reintroduction of a bycatch allowance as…
The Labour Party intends to engage much more closely with the fishing industry than it has done…
The top DEFRA ministerial team, led by Secretary of State, Michael Gove, met recently with key…
The Federation has today received the following letter from the Secretary of State, Michael…
Fishing will be a sort of litmus test for Brexit. As the UK begins the process of leaving the EU, we…
The Fisheries Bill contained in the Queen’s speech, along with the Government’s…
The bewildering change of political fortunes over the last few weeks prompts the fair…
The Management of Fisheries within the UK Zone Post-Brexit
In a letter received before the announcement of the General Election, Fisheries Minister,…
Each week, the NFFO shines a spotlight on a different aspect of its policy towards the…
The Financial Times has reported on manoeuvrings by European fishing groups in France,…
Each week, the NFFO shines a spotlight on a different aspect of its policy towards the…
Notwithstanding the referendum result in 2014, in which the Scottish electorate rejected…
The UK media reported this week on a leaked document from the EU Parliament, explaining why…
The NFFO has raised the issue of bass with Fisheries Minister George Eustice. At a meeting…
Through its work with the North Sea Advisory Council, the NFFO has been centrally involved in…
The beginning of 2017 and the second year of the progressive implementation of the EU landings…
The December Council, as usual, generated a mixed bag of winners and losers. The underlying…
The December Council remains (for the time being) an important date in the fishing calendar.
The NFFO has made it clear to Fisheries Minister, George Eustice, that the Commission’s…
The NFFO met recently with a large delegation from the Norwegian Seafood Alliance, which is…
The UK’s two main representative organisations for commercial fishermen – the…
The Common Fisheries Policy has been one of the least successful European policies. At its…
Brexit Takes Centre Stage at Fishing Industry Debate
Brexit will dominate the NFFO’s work this summer and for the foreseeable future. But…
North Sea Member States have now submitted their Joint Recommendation for the Discard Plan for…
The North West Waters member states have now submitted their Joint Recommendations to the…
For 37 years the Mid-Channel Conference has provided an international forum for Channel…
The log-jam caused by the long running, bad-tempered, jurisdictional dispute between the…
The Commission has recently adopted its long-awaited proposal for a new Technical…
The NFFO will not take a formal position on the forthcoming referendum on membership of the EU.…
The North Sea and North West Waters advisory councils have both published their advice on the…
The Common Fisheries Policy has to date been driven almost exclusively by conservation…
A briefing note for Co-legislators
The EU landings obligation will come into force on 1st January 2016.
We are now in receipt of the definitive TAC and quota changes agreed at the December…
The Council of European fisheries ministers which decided the quota levels for 2016 was held in…
An NFFO team has arrived in Brussels for the Fisheries Council on 14th /15th December, where…
Many have predicted that the EU landings obligation - because of the top-down way it has been…
Everyone makes mistakes. A measure of intelligence is how quickly we learn from those…
In an open letter to the New Economics Foundation, the NFFO has challenged its misguided…
In advance of the annual round of quota negotiations, the National Federation of…
The main EU instrument governing the rules on technical conservation is a regulation dating…
The Commission’s proposal on bass – effectively a moratorium on catches –…
The Federation writes to the Minister on the need for a proportionate response to bass…
A rather bureaucratic exchange of letters between Commissioner Vella and the Chairman of the…
Fisheries Minister, George Eustice, met recently in London with the NFFO’s Executive…
The NFFO recently participated in a major seminar in Roskilde, Denmark, organised by the…
The NFFO has prepared the following position paper on a sea bass conservation strategy. A…
The EU landings obligation, enshrined in the CFP reform of June 2013, was the result of a toxic…
The ill-conceived European Commission proposal for a ban on small-scale drift nets is badly…
The SNP has made no secret of its ambition to take the lead in representing the UK in the Council of…
Earlier this year, the Commission introduced emergency measures for the bass fishery…
It is almost two years since it was decided to introduce a degree of regionalisation into…
The Federation looks forward to its work programme for 2015.
The NFFO was recently part of a Europeche/EAPO delegation which met with the new…
Spurdog presents a particular challenge to fishermen, fisheries managers, scientists and…
The NFFO has said that an obscure Brussels Committee which has expressed support for a blanket…
An important workshop was held recently in Dublin to make progress on the design and…
An NFFO delegation took part in a recent meeting in Brussels, between European Commission…
One of the many mysterious aspects of the Commission’s proposal for blanket ban on drift…
NFFO Response to Greenpeace/NUTFA Report "Championing coastal waters".
There are many reasons to be concerned about the way that the EU landings obligation is…
Effort control (days at sea restrictions) as part of the EU Cod Management Plan, was dealt a…
The reasons why the NFFO will use everything at its disposal to resist the blanket ban on drift…
The UK has made clear that it will throw its weight behind opposition to the proposed EU ban on…
A meeting in Dublin recently attended by the NFFO saw progress on a project at the cutting edge of…
Reference points: Dover (Kent) to Yarmouth ( Suffolk) For hundreds of years traditional…
The Commission’s hard-nosed response to concerns, expressed by the NFFO and others,…
The main challenge that I see at the moment is to keep the fishing industry onboard when the…
As the European institutions struggle to absorb the implications of last week’s…
Cut this crazy EU dragnet or our herring fishermen are lost
Coalition of fishermen, scientists and conservationists preparing to resist Commission…
Say what you like about the EU Fisheries Council each December with its all-night circus. At…
The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations (NFFO) has welcomed last…
Midnight January 1st 2016 marks the embarkation date for the EU discards ban for our demersal…
The much postponed EU Norway talks for a fisheries agreement for 2014 began in Bergen on Monday…
Inshore Fisherman, Tony Delahunty, writes to his local PM asking him to support the fishing…
The “short and brutal” Council which delivered TAC decisions for next year on…
Council Outcomes on Quota Allocations for 2014 Reflect Stock Recovery But More Needs to Be Done…
The political decision by the Council of Ministers and European Parliament to place an…
Now that the shape of the reformed CFP is known in broad terms, and the UKAFPO legal challenge to…
A clearer idea of the substance of the reformed CFP emerging from the final stages of agreement…
Even before the ink is dry on the CFP reform, the first tentative steps towards regional…
The agreement reached by the Council of Ministers in Brussels in the early hours of 15th May…
The Demersal Working Group of the North Sea Regional Advisory Council (NSRAC) travelled…
The Council of Ministers meeting in Brussels on 13th and 14th June could turn out to be a pivotal…
The Council of Ministers held in Luxembourg on 22nd April will not go down as one of the decisive…
An NFFO delegation has travelled to Luxembourg where EU fisheries ministers are discussing…
The MMO and NFFO have agreed to work together on safety, cost issues and the significantly…
“The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisation has welcomed the vote…
I write further to your confirmation, at the recent meeting of ACFA, that the Commission is…
Something of a revolution in thinking about the CFP has taken place over the last decade. Ten…
The noticeable feature of the NFFO team in Brussels at the December Council is that reflects and…
For those of us who have attended too many December Councils, the meeting of EU fisheries…
Commentators are still assessing the significance of the vote in the European Parliament…
The Council of Ministers has today unanimously agreed to amend the parts of the EU Cod Plan which…
An NFFO delegation, reflecting the diversity of the Federation’s regional and fleet…
Except in a single species fishery in urgent need of dramatic remedial action, zero TACs have no…
The fishing industry has an overwhelming interest in a practical and workable Common…
What are we to make of the astounding sums of money put at the disposal of environmental lobby…
As EU and Norway and then next month the EU Council of Ministers, stand poised to depart from…
The annual seminar organised by the Commission which marks the beginning of the autumn…
The Lisbon Treaty has given the European Parliament a central role in agreeing legislation…
The European Commission has made a Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of…
The European Commission has convinced itself, with the assistance of the European Court of…
It has become a commonplace, accepted in all quarters, that the Common Fisheries Policy is a…
The environmental NGOs' disappointing, although not altogether surprising, response to the…
The Council of Ministers reached political agreement on a ‘General Approach’ to…
Regionalisation of the Common Fisheries Policy has moved centre stage since the NFFO (amongst…
The EU Cod Management Plan has been evaluated by STECF and found to be flawed in some serious…
As the reform process continues, the European Parliament Fisheries Committee recently…
After 20 years of what we could politely call sub-optimal performance of the CFP's resource…
The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations welcomes the…
All the signs are that 2012 will be a pivotal year for the fishing industry.
TACs and Effort Move in Opposite Directions
The main North Sea joint stock TACs were agreed with Norway in late November and with the…
After two days of negotiations in Brussels, the conclusion of the EU’s Fisheries…
The UK, with strong support from France, Germany, Spain, Netherlands and Denmark, managed to…
For the first time since she took office two years ago, Commissioner Damanaki met recently with…
The Catch Quota scheme will have up to 12% cod quota over and above the TAC for 2012 (the same…
It would be hard to imagine a fisheries policy instrument than the EU effort control regime that…
Once the year-end quota and effort negotiations have concluded and we begin the New Year, it can…
Submission Prepared by the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations in…
The first round of negotiations towards the annual fisheries agreement between the EU and…
A major consultative meeting was held in Brussels on 8th September as a prelude to the autumn…
Twelve words have rocked the foundations of the EU Cod Management Plan and have undermined the…
The EU rules which cover technical conservation measures, such as mesh size, minimum landing…
The final outcome of the CFP reform is wide open; that was the impression left by Lowri Evans,…
The NFFO and the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation recently jointly briefed MPs on the…
We can expect the usual crop of apocalyptic predictions from the mainstream media and…
As the European Commission prepares its proposals for CFP reform, the NFFO has published its 10…
Each Commissioner quickly establishes a hallmark of their time in office. For Joe Borge it was a…
Commissioner Damanaki’s (if not necessarily DG Mare’s) enthusiasm for special…
If the CFP fails to find a way to regionalise its decision-making it will drift into a decade of…
The European Court of Auditors has instigated an investigation into fleet overcapacity…
At a recent meeting with the Lori Evans, Director General of DG Mare, the Commission’s…
The Council of Ministers meeting of December 2010 may come to be seen as the high-water mark of a…
A major clash in Brussels over fisheries jurisdiction is looming in Brussels, which could have…
The Commission seems to have lost its way on discards. Although the rhetoric is still there -…
For as long as total allowable catches and days-at-sea restrictions are fixed at the December…
The new Control Regulation was forced through the Council of Ministers in October 2009 to beat…
The NFFO and Scottish Fishermen's Federation recently held their first meeting with new EC…
CFP reform seems to be adrift after the lead Commission official on the reform process,…
A major conference on the main CFP reform marked the end of one phase and the beginning of…
The introduction of the new Omega net gauge has been seriously mishandled and there are…
The UK has now published its response to the Commission’s Green Paper on CFP reform.
The Lisbon Treaty means that from here on in all decisions on European fisheries issues will be…
The annual quota negotiations have begun in Brussels following a late evening meeting between…
Commissioner Joe Borg, outlined his views on the future direction of travel for Commission…
The NFFO’s response to the Commission’s Green Paper is now complete and will be…
The NFFO West Coast Committee brought together Bella Murfin, Defra's head of the Access to…
A Commission proposal to hand itself additional powers to apply technical rules has been…
Commission Proposals “Reckless and Irresponsible”The European…
NFFO Chief Executive, Barrie Deas, one of the speakers at the recent RAC conference on decision…
The kind of CFP reforms pressed for by the NFFO, have received a tremendous boost by this…
Briefing Note on the Proposed Technical Conservation Regulation
The EU exemption from using the new electronic mesh gauge expires on 1st September.
The NFFO recently shared a platform with European Fisheries Commissioner, Joe Borg at an event…
The publication of the Commission’s Green Paper on CFP reform has started a process of…
At a recent meeting with senior Commission officials, in Brussels, the NFFO spelt out the…
The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation and the National Federation of…
Federation representatives recently attended a major three-day meeting with senior…
Belgian fishing industry representatives met recently with Bristol Channel Fishermen in a…
The challenge is how to establish a process that integrates biology and economics and places…
The debate on the CFP after 2012 started in earnest this week with an exchange of views between…
"Hostile and sometimes ill-informed, superficial comment can be highly damaging to the…
The disappointing result of the December 2008 EU Fisheries Council has not come as a surprise to…
Key features of the December settlement for Fishing Grounds
This year’s Council of Ministers meeting to decide TACs and quotas for 2009 was held in…
The EU Norway agreement for reciprocal fisheries arrangements in 2009 was agreed on 10th…
The NFFO used its position on the Advisory Committee for Fisheries and Aquaculture (ACFA) to…
The second round of EU Norway talks for a reciprocal agreement in 2009 concluded on Friday 28th…
The European Commission has plans for a new Control Regulation for European Fisheries.
The NFFO has secured a place on an influential committee that will make recommendations on…
The annual EU Norway talks are a complex set of negotiations over two rounds that, amongst other…
Cod recovery is expected again to dominate this year’s December Council
As NFFO News went to press the NFFO was due to meet the new Fisheries Minister Huw…
New Fisheries Minister, Huw Irranca-Davies, met with the two UK Federations, NFFO and SFF,…