Environmental NGOs from around the Baltic Sea are urging the European Commission and fisheries ministers to set 2027 fishing opportunities well below the scientific advice issued by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). The groups argue that extra precaution is needed to allow depleted populations and the wider ecosystem to recover.
The state of many Baltic stocks has been documented over decades. Eastern and western Baltic cod and western Baltic herring are now in such poor condition that ICES advises zero catch, yet even with targeted fisheries closed for several years none of the three is showing sufficient recovery. The condition of flatfish such as plaice is also raising concern, and salmon spawning migration has fallen short of target levels for three consecutive years.
The NGOs point to the European Commission’s own evaluation of the Common Fisheries Policy, which found that progress on rebuilding stocks is lacking and that the number of stocks threatened by collapse has risen. They call for catch limits set below the FMSY point value, where available, and for full implementation of the policy’s ecosystem-based provisions.
The issue sits alongside BalticWind’s energy coverage rather than within it, but the connection is real: a degraded Baltic ecosystem is the backdrop against which offshore wind, shipping and fisheries all compete for the same sea. Marine spatial planning that ignores ecological limits stores up conflict for every sector using the basin.
