Europe drops fish-quota proposals

BRUSSELS, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- The European Commission says it has dropped proposals that would have automatically cut fish quotas where there is not enough data about stock levels.

Some countries had opposed the plans for a 25 percent reduction in quotas for stocks that were lacking in information about levels, Britain's Independent reported Friday.

The proposals, part of efforts to make the European Union's fisheries more sustainable, were not based on science, opponents said.

The commission said quotas would not automatically revert to the same level as the previous year for stocks without sufficient data but would be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Britain's Fisheries Minister Richard Benyon said he was glad to see some "realism" in the commission's decisions.

"Just because the data on a stock doesn't give the full picture, that doesn't mean slashing the amount which you're allowed to catch by a quarter is the right response," he said.

"The U.K. fully supports the commission's ambitions to ensure that fish stocks are sustainable in the long term. But we can't support proposals which have no basis in science and could risk increasing discards from otherwise healthy stocks."