Hidden in the Fine Print: How an EU Fisheries Reform Could Quietly Weaken Protection for Sharks and Rays
A consultation is open in Brussels right now that will barely make the news – yet it could help decide the fate of some of Europe's most endangered animals. It turns on two obscure rules in the EU's fisheries plans. Once you understand them, you see why „simplification" can become a threat.
What this is about
The EU manages its most important fish stocks through so-called Multiannual Plans (MAPs) – separate rulebooks for the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the Western Waters and the Western Mediterranean. In May 2026, the European Commission opened a Call for Evidence to revise these plans as part of a wider „Omnibus" reform. The stated aim: simpler, clearer, more workable rules.
There is nothing wrong with clearer rules. The problem is in the detail – specifically in two safeguards now on the table: the 5% rule in the northern plans and the „most vulnerable stock" mechanism in the Western Mediterranean. Both sound technical. In practice, they are the single most important protection for a group of animals the plans don't actually manage in their own right: the sharks, rays and chimaeras caught as bycatch.
Why sharks, rays and chimaeras in particular?
Sharks and their relatives are not just another line in the bycatch ledger. As apex and meso-predators, many of them play a regulating – in some habitats even a keystone – role in the food web. By shaping the abundance and behaviour of their prey across several trophic levels, they help keep entire communities structured and resilient. Where they disappear, food webs can tip over, triggering cascades and lasting shifts that are extremely hard to reverse.
Their biology makes things worse. Most of these species grow slowly, mature late and produce few young. They recover sluggishly and are highly sensitive to even moderate additional mortality. They are also among the most threatened groups in European waters: the Mediterranean is the most dangerous sea in the world for them – of 73 assessed species, 39 are at risk of extinction, more than half.
And yet they are not target stocks under the plans. They are caught incidentally in the very same fisheries the plans regulate, but appear there only as „bycatch" or „data-poor stocks" – with no catch or effort limit of their own. That is exactly the crux: where a species has no limit of its own, the plan's general precautionary architecture is its only line of defence. And that architecture is precisely what is now being rebuilt.
The „5% rule" – a safety brake, not red tape
The 5% rule requires fishing opportunities to be set so that the probability of the spawning-stock biomass falling below its critical limit (Blim) stays under five percent. It is the operational expression of the precautionary principle anchored in Article 2 of the Common Fisheries Policy. For data-poor species – exactly the shark and ray bycatch for which no stock-specific advice exists – this standard is the most important protection there is, because it bites hardest precisely where scientific certainty is weakest. Outright deletion was already proposed once and rejected by the European Parliament in 2024 – it should not return through the back door of „simplification".
The „most vulnerable stock" – the Mediterranean's quiet bycatch brake
In the Western Mediterranean, fishing effort – expressed as allowable fishing days – is steered by the condition of the „most vulnerable stock": the target species whose fishing mortality is furthest from the sustainable level, currently European hake. The paradox: the very strict effort brake triggered by that most overfished stock is, in practice, the only real limit on shark and ray bycatch mortality in the entire basin. Loosen the definition so that more fishing is allowed on healthier stocks, and effort rises across the whole mixed fishery – and with it the mortality of sensitive species that have no protection of their own. Several of them may not even be retained under the Barcelona Convention and GFCM measures.
What a responsible reform needs to do
Keep the precautionary core of the 5% rule. Overlaps may be clarified, but the new text must guarantee an equivalent or higher level of protection – plain deletion would be a step backwards.
Tie any change to the „most vulnerable stock" to binding bycatch safeguards – consistent with the existing retention bans under the Barcelona Convention and the GFCM.
Strengthen monitoring instead of weakening it. Wider remote electronic monitoring (REM) and observer coverage would finally close the data gap for sharks and rays.
Keep rebuilding trajectories time-bound, science-based and automatically safeguarded – resting on ICES advice, so that „more stable incomes" does not become a gateway to chronic above-advice fishing.
Stay anchored in the precautionary and ecosystem-based objectives of the CFP – coherent with Article 2 of the Common Fisheries Policy and Good Environmental Status under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive.
Why this matters now – and what you can do
Decisions like this rarely arrive with a bang. They happen in the fine print, in consultation deadlines most people never see. That is exactly why every well-reasoned response counts.
The good news: you don't need to be an industry insider to be heard. The European Commission has opened an official Call for Evidence, and any EU citizen can submit a response through the Commission's „Have Your Say" portal. The window opened on 26 May 2026 and runs for four weeks – so, in all likelihood, until late June 2026; the exact closing date is shown on the portal page.
Add your voice here:
You don't have to write an expert report. It already helps to make the point clearly: yes to simplification – but only if the level of protection for sensitive species is maintained or improved, if any loosening is tied to binding bycatch measures, and if monitoring is strengthened rather than cut. Sharks and rays have no lobby in Brussels that can match the volume of the fishing industry. But they have us.
Sources
Dulvy, N. K. (2016). Chondrichthyan Crisis in the Mediterranean Sea.
Ferretti, F., Worm, B., Britten, G. L., Heithaus, M. R., & Lotze, H. K. (2010). Patterns and ecosystem consequences of shark declines in the ocean. Ecology Letters, 13(8), 1055–1071.
Heithaus, M. R., Frid, A., Wirsing, A. J., & Worm, B. (2008). Predicting ecological consequences of marine top predator declines. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 23(4), 202–210.
Winker, H., et al. (2025). The ICES MSY approach to reference point estimation is not precautionary. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 82(11).
European Commission (2026). Commission seeks feedback on fisheries multiannual plans (Call for Evidence – Omnibus).
Note: This post reflects my personal assessment of an ongoing EU consultation and is not legal advice.
Kommentare