Interim assessment of the implementation of Production and Marketing Plans pursuant to the CMO Regulation and the EMFF Regulation

The reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) and of the Common Market Organisation (CMO) resulted in an enhanced role for fisheries and aquaculture Producer Organisations (POs) in the development of a market-oriented approach to collectively programme and manage the activities of their members, and in supporting CFP objectives. The CMO Regulation provides POs with the obligation to elaborate and submit Production and Marketing Plans (PMPs) to their competent national authorities (Article 28 of the CMO Regulation), while Article 66 of the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) Regulation enables public financing for the elaboration and implementation of the PMPs. DG MARE requested an interim assessment of the implementation of PMPs to cover the first two full years of implementation of the current CMO Regulation (2014 and 2015). 

The objectives and scope of the interim assessment were to document the state of play and compliance of involved actors with the obligations arising from the legal framework, to learn lessons from the experiences over 2014 and 2015 and provide recommendations to improve implementation over the remainder of the programming period, and to complete four specific tasks: 

• To provide an inventory of POs and PMPs;
• To document the financial support provided;
• To assess the content and quality of PMPs; and
• To conduct an interim assessment of the PMPs against standard evaluation criteria.