The European Commission has announced its decision on deductions of fishing quotas for year 2012 to those Member States which exceeded their quotas in the previous year. This decision foresees for the first time a 50% increase on deductions for those countries which have repeatedly exceeded their quotas between 2009 and 2011.

Fishing quotas or total allowable catches (TACs) are set by the European Commission to limit catches for most significant commercial fish stocks and are shared between member States based on a relative stability system. When these quotas are exceeded the European Commission adopts a series of deductions from future fishing quotas to Member States which have breached their allocated quota.

According to Commission's decision for year 2012, some deductions per country and species will be applied, such as the case on mackerel fishing of 6.439,80 tons for the UK. Other heavy deductions will apply to horse mackerel with a deduction quota of 11.623,92 for Spain or 962,28 in the case of anchovy also for Spain.

These deductions aim at ensuring the long term sustainability of fisheries, one of the fundamental objectives set forth by EU's Common Fisheries Policy. The deductions are based on public guidelines established for those species suffering overfishing. In cases where a Member State has no quotas available for the overfished stocks, the amounts can be deducted from the quotas available for other stocks in the same geographical area.