The reform of the EU Common Fisheries Policy is being discussed. It is accepted by all Member States that European waters are degraded, increasingly pressured by commercial and recreational sectors. Despite the adoption of an Integrated Maritime Policy to overcome the incoherence and fragmentation of marine policy, fisheries are to retain their independence from the policy. The discrete legal regime covering European fisheries provides for sustainable exploitation, a contradiction in terms, according to an unenforceable precautionary approach with Member States having a legally enforceable right to a continuing quota share. Until the values of the Common Fisheries Policy are changed and fisheries policy is subjected to the integrated maritime policy, fisheries will continue to decline.