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Brussels (dpa) - The EU Commission assumes that an agreement can be reached with Great Britain on future fish catches in the coming weeks.
After consultations with the national EU ministers on Monday about the negotiations, the responsible EU Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius said: "We are still confident that we can agree on final fishing opportunities for 2021 before the end of March."
The current chairman of the EU Fisheries Council, Portugal's Minister for Marine Affairs Ricardo Serrão Santos, stressed that the negotiations had to be concluded as soon as possible.
Although the EU countries had already agreed on quotas after two days of negotiations in mid-December, the Brexit negotiations, which were still ongoing at the time, were only preliminary results for the first three months of 2021. The Brexit negotiations only broke through on Christmas Eve proclaimed.
It is about more than 70 fish stocks - of which 28 are interesting for German fishermen, according to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture.
The federal government has been putting pressure on the negotiations to be concluded for a long time - it advocates the interests of German fishermen and demands planning security.
The debate is also about the sustainable use of marine resources.
Environmentalists point out that many fish stocks are overfished and are calling for stricter environmental protection rules to better preserve the marine ecosystem.
The Federal Ministry of Agriculture emphasized on Monday that sustainability “always includes the socio-economic question”.
"Our fishermen must also be able to live from their catch," says a corresponding message.
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© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210222-99-544916 / 2