BackgroundChapter 1 Box 2. CFP-Landing Obligation covered in Article 15The CFP is the EU's instrument for the management of fisheries and aquaculture. In 2013, the Council and Parliament reached agreement on a new CFP for the long-term environmental, economic, and social sustainability of fishing and aquaculture activities. The new CFP's basic regulation (EU, 2013) entered into force on 1 January 2014. The regulation makes fundamental changes to the way that Europe's fisheries are managed, with the aim of managing fish stocks sustainably to ensure a prosperous fishing industry and a healthy marine environment. Thus, the reform includes making use of the MSY reference points as targets for exploiting commercially important fish stocks.One of the most important points in the CFP is the introduction of a landing obligation. The landing obligation is only applicable to TAC-regulated species in the Atlantic and to species previously subject to minimum landing size regulations in the Mediterranean Sea. Thus, catches must be retained on board, recorded, and landed. The landing obligation requires all catches of regulated commercial species on-board to be counted against quota whilst undersized fish cannot be marketed for direct human consumption purposes. It is being phased in across fisheries and species, starting with pelagic fisheries and fisheries in the Baltic Sea in 2015 and is to be completed by 2019, in accordance with a specified time frame (Fig. 1.1). Figure 1.1: Time-frame for the landing obligation implementation. Thesis objectiveChapter 1 stocks and the economics of mixed fisheries. To this end, this thesis addresses three key aspects of the implementation of a landing obligation. Box 7. Worldwide discard management regimes experiencesDiscard restrictions and discard management regimes have been implemented to different extents in a number of fisheries around the world (e.g.,