The Group of the European People's Party (EPP Group) is the largest in the European Parliament with 264 Members.
It brings together centre and centre-right pro-European political forces from the Member States of the EU.
Most of the parties represented in the EPP Group also belong to the European People's Party. The EPP was the first-ever transnational political party to be formed at European level, and has the strongest representation in the European Council of Ministers. EPP parties came together to advance the goal of a more competitive and democratic Europe, closer to its citizens, and a social market economy.
As the Community was created to ensure peace and promote prosperity in Europe, among the policies adopted to achieve these goals was the encouragement of economic development in regions suffering from a lack of jobs and opportunities. The EPP Group firmly believes that fisheries and aquaculture have an important role to play in implementing this policy of economic and social cohesion. The two sectors employ 526,034 people, both men and women, and their combined production value (fisheries, aquaculture, processing and marketing) amounted to 5.3 million tonnes in 2006 (the EU has the second biggest fisheries sector in the world, after China and Peru)