The 9th Session of the Governing Council of EUROFISH took place on 28-29 January 2010 at the EUROFISH office in Copenhagen. The Governing Council is the annual meeting of the representatives of the countries that own EUROFISH. Currently these are Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Spain, and Turkey. It also includes representatives from countries that may join the organisation in the future, and from the FAO, the driving force behind the creation of EUROFISH. The meeting reviews the activities undertaken over the past year, decides on the work programme of the year to come, discusses budgetary issues, and makes proposals to deepen the relationship between the organisation and its member countries.

This year the proceedings were marred by an accident shortly before the start of the session that put the Eurofish director, Aina Afanasjeva, in hospital and resulted in Behnan Thomas steering the meeting together with the Chairperson Carmen Rodriguez.

Eurofish staff presented the Governing Council with a summary of the activities that had taken place in 2009 dividing them into dissemination, promotion, and project activities and showing the results and outcomes. One of the highlights of 2009 was the ratification of the EUROFISH Agreement by the Polish Parliament. Poland will become the 13th EUROFISH member country when the Polish President signs the document.

The review gave the Council an updated look into how the organisation serves its member countries and is developing its role as a regional intergovernmental organisation for post-harvest fisheries and aquaculture. The work programme for 2010 was presented and debated at length with several suggestions from the representatives present at the meeting. Other issues such as the budget were discussed in a closed session with only the representatives from member countries present.

The Governing Council apart from being an important management procedure is also a useful networking opportunity – for the representatives amongst themselves, but also for EUROFISH. After one and a half days the meeting concluded with several decisions that will help the organisation carry out its mandate.

The 9th EUROFISH Governing Council was attended by 19 representatives from 15 European countries and the FAO.