(g) any fish as bait, other than dead bait fish, dead smelt, dead herring, dead shrimp, dead fish eggs or the skin, fins or eyes of game fish caught by angling.

I should like to add that, independently of any special rules of origin or preferential trade agreements, countries and companies exporting fish or fishery products to the EU will always have to comply with the regulation on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and with the EU’s health and food safety requirements.

The report, which aims to regulate fishing of flatfish in the Baltic Sea and to stop the practice of discarding while maintaining the model of fisheries management known as total allowable catch (TAC), indicates that this system is functioning properly and has a practical application for certain species of fish.

Our regulation on deep-sea fishing tries to establish specific access requirements and associated conditions for fishing of deep-sea stocks.

This is also the doctrine of the FAO, which in its preparatory work on the guidelines for the protection of vulnerable ecosystems ruled out using depth as a criterion, precisely because it considered it to be arbitrary, lacking in scientific basis and more fanciful than anything, because, as I have said, since it does not protect coral or seamounts that are at a lesser depth, it would immediately wipe off the map fisheries that have been operating for some time without any problems, such as, for example cutlassfish fisheries in the Azores or black halibut in the area regulated by the NAFO. These are just two examples.

Whitefish vessels can now only fish for 15 days a month, including steaming time to the fishing grounds, and the 15 days will be reduced to 12 days unless a further 20% of the fleet is decommissioned.