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Brussels (dpa) - The EU states have agreed on temporary fishing quotas by the end of July.
This will ensure that European fishing companies can continue their business after March 31, said Ricardo Santos, the Portuguese minister for marine affairs and current chairman of the ministerial meeting, on Tuesday.
The background to this is negotiations with the United Kingdom on shared stocks.
After the British left the EU, there was a complicated dispute over total catches and their distribution.
At times, negotiations on a Brexit trade pact threatened to fail due to the fish issue.
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After the agreement between the EU countries, the next step will be to continue negotiations with Great Britain.
"The agreement provides for preliminary total catches by July 31," explained EU Fisheries Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius.
Because the Brexit negotiations dragged on until Christmas 2020, the EU states only agreed on provisional fishing rules for the stocks shared with the United Kingdom in mid-December.
Many fish stocks are depleted or endangered.
Environmentalists have long been calling for fishing to be restricted to protect ecosystems from serious damage.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210323-99-938198 / 2