What is the current status of this proposal?
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The revised control regulation entered into force 9 January 2024.
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Recreational sea fishers fishing for or catching certain species shall be registered and their catches registered and submitted in an electronic form from January 2026 at the latest.
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Provisions will be phased in from now to 2030.
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Provisions include registration of all sea anglers fishing for certain species (Baltic salmon, Baltic cod, sea bass, bluefin tuna, sword fish…), electronic log-books and recreational fishing gear to be labelled “except hand-held gear” (thanks to our lobby efforts).
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5 years underway. EFTTA-EAA have had several meetings and talks with Commission officials
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Last meeting so far: the EFTTA-EAA office 19 April concerning the development of the EU fishing app and backbone system. A tender to be published within a month or two. Some EU Member States will make use of the EU delivered app, others prefer to develop an own app.
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The revised regulation is here in all EU languages. See Article 55: Recreational fisherieshttps://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/2842/oj
EU Fishing App
The regulations stipulate that marine recreational fishers operating in EU territorial waters must register and declare their catch through a certified app starting in 2026.
Currently, the EU offers the following app that is considered as a pilote project.
recreational-fishing.ec.europa.eu/apps
This scheme forms the basis for what comes later this year: either this schema will be finetuned or replaced by another scheme. We will know more when a tender is published by the EU Commission in the near future. The winner of the tender shall deliver a fishing app(*), and the backbone system to collect and store the incoming data from the fishers’ apps.
The EU and national apps and schemes shall be up running in January 2026.
EFTTA-EAA has complained that not all recreational sea fishers are included from the start date (1st January 2026). It makes proper control and enforcement impossible, and will be the cause for flawed catch data.
* It will be required that the system shall be able to process data from multiple apps. These apps need be certified for compliance first, of course.
