The Common Fisheries Policy of the European Union was reformed in 2013 to improve the conservation of marine biological resources and the viability of the fishing sector and reduce unsustainable fishing practices (European Union 2013). One of the cornerstones of the reform is Article 15 (termed the Landing Obligation, LO), stipulating the obligation to bring to land all catches of quota- or size-regulated species with the overall aim to gradually eliminate discards. The shift of focus from

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... d catches to all catches (i.e. including discards) in the current CFP has had a number of wide-ranging implications on the scientific ecological knowledge and on the ways the scientific community is providing advice on fishing opportunities. Article 15, paragraph 2(b), of the CFP describes an exemption from the Landing Obligation for "species for which scientific evidence demonstrates high survival rates, taking into account the characteristics of the gear, of the fishing practices and of the ecosystem". This provision has sparked a high interest in discard survival assessments and mobilised Member States and fishing industry representative organisations. The STECF a well as the dedicated ICES group WKMEDS have been heavily involved in providing guidance and developing protocols on how to quantify discard survival robustly in the early stages. Spanning from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, more than 20 studies have been carried out all over Europe between 2013 and 2018 and assessed by the STECF. Generating robust evidence on discard survival estimates that is representative of a fishery still remains challenging. Defining what "high survival" means has also been challenging. The Landing Obligation has rendered the provision of scientific advice more complex to perform and quality-check, and more difficult to formulate. Since 2015, two main changes have been triggered in the ICES process, involving the way catch data are collected and the way forecasts are performed and presented. Changes in catch data have emerged [...]