Draft 2 General Guidelines for making MRs

This report contains the 2nd draft of general guidelines for making management recommendations (MRs) tailored for the EU fleet operating outside European waters; in accordance with the responsive fisheries management system (RFMS). The RFMS is a management approach founded on the concept of results-based management (RBM), where responsibility for fisheries management is to a point transferred to resource users, provided that they meet with necessary requirements set forth by the competent authorities and document that they can achieve specified management objectives.

These 2nd draft guidelines follow up on the 1st version, which were developed within FarFish in early stages of the project. Stakeholders representing the relevant authorities and the EU fleet, as well as any other stakeholders with vested interests in the specific fisheries have followed the 1st draft version of these guidelines in order to develop 1st version MRs for their fisheries. These MRs have now been reviewed and audited; and the feedback used to improve the guidelines. This process will now be repeated within the project, as these 2nd draft general guidelines will be tested/validated within the FarFish case studies. The third and final version of the guidelines will then be published as a voluntary European standard (CEN Workshop Agreement) at the end of the project.