Glossary
Quality Assurance of Information for the Marine Environmental Monitoring in Europe
A share of the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) allocated to an operating unit such as a country, a vessel, a company or an individual fisherman (individual quota) depending on the system of allocation. Quotas may or may not be transferable, inheritable, and tradable. While generally used to allocate total allowable catch, quotas could be used also to allocate fishing effort or biomass.
The TAC and Quota system used in the EU fisheries management is based on scientific advice from the fishery institutions. Our institute contributes to stock assessments of about 30 fish stocks. The data are processed in ICES working groups, and result in annual ACFM advice on how high a TAC should be set for a given species. The actual TACs for North Sea stocks are decided annually by the EU Fisheries ministers and in external negotiations with Norway. Country quota in the EU are allocated according to the principle of 'relative stability' i.e. each country receives always the same relative share of the allocated TAC of a stock or species (Germany in total about 14%, differing from species to species). The German quota of approximately 400.000 t of fish is usually fished only partially due to poor state of the stocks or lack of interest in some less valued species.
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