EU wants safety-first approach to fishing quotas

Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki proposed tightening fishing limits for stocks where fishermen have not given scientists data needed to decide annual catch limits.

"Sufficient scientific data is still missing for the majority of the stocks, mainly due to inadequate reporting," said a statement from Damanaki's team at the European Commission.

"The Commission will therefore be using a new method for setting fishing limits, notably cutting levels where insufficient data exist," the statement added.

"This approach would phase out overfishing and encourage better data collection and reporting by member states."

The Commission has said around 72 percent of European fish stocks are currently exploited at unsustainable levels.

Experts say a lull in fishing for a few years would allow stocks to recover to a level where fishermen can harvest much more than they do today, and make bigger profits, without depleting the resource in the long-term -- a level known as "maximum sustainable yield."

Damanaki has said she wants to get fisheries back to that level by 2015.

"Around 30 percent to 40 percent of fishing fleets are not making enough money to keep going in the long term," she told reporters.

"Since there is no money, we cannot go on providing subsidies to support continued overfishing."

(Reporting by Pete Harrison)