João Aguiar Machado, Director-General of the Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE) visited ICES Secretariat in Copenhagen today to sign the annual Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two organizations.
ICES provides the European Union with scientific advice on fishing opportunities for more than 220 fish stocks on an annual basis, as well as answering special requests that relate to the impacts of fisheries, evaluation of fisheries management strategies, and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD).
João Aguiar Machado is new to his role in DG MARE having taken over from Lowri Evans in September 2015. Nils Hammer, ICES President, welcomed the new Director-General to Copenhagen and to ICES. Following the MoU signing, Aguiar Machado was given an introduction to ICES work and took the opportunity to visit the various expert group meetings that were taking place (Benchmark Workshop on Pelagic Stocks-Norwegian spring spawning herring, Workshop on method to aggregate species within species groups for MSFD D1, and an ICES Training course in the R Environment).
DG MARE is the department within the European Commission responsible for the implementation of the Common Fisheries policy and of the Integrated Maritime Policy and reports to Karmenu Vella, Commissioner for Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries. ICES and the European Union have had a formal MoU since 1987.
