The Joint EIFAAC/ICES WGEEL met in 2012 in ICES HQ, Copenhagen, Denmark. The group was chaired by Russell Poole (IE) and Cédric Briand (FR), and there were thirty-six participants present at the meeting from sixteen countries. Additional in-puts to the WGEEL were made by Henrik Sparholt, Poul Degnbol, Neil Holdsworth, Mark Dickey-Collas and Helle Gjeding Jørgensen from ICES. ICES has provided advice on eel since 1999. Following long-term declines in recruits (e.g. glass eel since 1980, yellow eel since 1960s) and landings (since 1960s), the urgent compilation of a management plan was recommended, aiming at a recovery of the stock. Suggested eel-specific management targets were based on precautionary rea-soning and general considerations. In 2007, the EU adopted the Eel Regulation, which led to the development of Eel Management Plans by 2009. Implementation of these plans has generated much more data, and further research studies have been execut-ed. Reporting to the EU in 2012 by Member States on their post-evaluation of the im-plementation of the first three years of the Regulation will enable the first compilation of the implemented management actions and the stock indicators. This should facilitate the planned post-evaluation by ICES of the international eel stock. The Terms of Reference for the 2012 WGEEL was framed with this approach in mind. The WGEEL meeting was organized on a general agreed agenda and task based meetings with discussion plenary sessions. The report comprises six main chapters in two sections, the first section addresses data, trends and information for current advice in four chapters, the second section addresses International Stock Assessment, the planning for the review of reported local stock assessments and stock indicators, delivered by EU Member States, includ-ing a preliminary assessment of the information currently available to the WGEEL. A final third section in the report summaries other areas of WGEEL activity.