European politicians have agreed a commitment to ban the "discarding" of usable fish at sea, but were criticised for failing to take strong action to tackle overfishing.
Fisheries ministers meeting to discuss moves to reform the policy which governs all European fishing fleets have agreed there should be an end to discards but no firm date was set for bringing in the ban.
Provisional dates published by the EU council would see discards banned for Pelagic fisheries such as mackerel and herring by January 1 2014.
And a ban on discards in whitefish fisheries such as cod