After ”20 or 21” tri-lateral negotiations, EU fisheries ministers finally agreed on a new Control system in the early Tuesday morning hours, including a penalty point system that may result in revoked fishing licenses and widened possibilities for the Commission to punish financially overfishing member states. The Council also agreed on a high-grading ban for the entire Baltic Sea.
Unclear implementation
There remained, however, some uncertainty as for when parts of the new control system will be in force. The main body will be in effect from Jan. 1 next year, but Commissioner Joe Borg conceded at a joint press conference with the Swedish Presidency that a one-year deferral had been decided “for a number of articles”. Asked about the implementation of the new penalty point system he said it would not be in force until “implementing rules” has first been drawn up and taken effect.
“This was accepted in Council at 3 am”, he added, pointing out that the adoption of the whole proposal had been preceded by “20 or 21 tri-lateral negotiations”.
On the controversial issue of whether or not to include recreational fisheries in the control system, the Council rejected all moves to include it in the national quotas, but member states will have to report, after assessments, impact that “is not insignificant” on stocks that are under recovery plans, Commissioner Borg said. He mentioned the Baltic and North Sea cod and bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean and the Eastern Atlantic as examples.
As for the Baltic Sea TACs (Total Allowable Quotas) for 2010, the Council followed scientific advice/Commission proposals for both the Eastern and the Western cod stocks, but softened all other recommendations from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), in two cases even going further than the Commission.
There was a discrepancy in the early information on the Western Herring TACs: the Commissioner mentioned an 18 percent reduction at the press conference, while a Council press release said it was 16.5 percent. ICES had recommended a 31 percent reduction, and the Commission had proposed 21 percent.
The Swedish Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Eskil Erlandsson, who presided at the ministers’ meeting, expressed satisfaction that the dire situation for the Baltic cod has improved, and said that the state of the stocks will now be further enhanced by new rules that will increase the selectivity of fishing gear. He said the allowed mesh size of trawls will be increased, and that the trawls will have a larger “window”, both measures aimed at sorting out juvenile fish from the catch.
The Council also adopted a total ban on high-grading in the Baltic, intended to bring the amount of discards in cod fisheries further down.
As for the new Control Regulation, the minister stressed that it will be a step forward not only for fishermen, who will now be guaranteed fair competition, but also an important improvement for European consumers, ascertained that fish in stores is legally and sustainably caught.
Commissioner Borg envisioned great impact on the overfishing situation in EU waters as a whole, remarking that “a major problem with overfishing has been that fishermen who wished to beat the system could do so almost unnoticed”. He noted that “the dissuasive element” has now been “significantly strengthened”.
“We have now reached decisions and made headway on issues that will be of prime importance for EU fisheries, both in the immediate future and also in the long term”.
The New Control System
These are some of the corner stones in the new regulation system:
- Agreement has been reached on general harmonisation of the sanction system.
- A new penalty point system has been adopted, where fishermen who break the rules can be subject to a rising scale of sanctions, with their licenses being revoked as the final step.
- A payback system for overfished quotas with a 1.5 ratio was decided.
- A vessel monitoring system, and an electronic logbook, will be installed on all vessels 12 metres or longer. The present limit is 15 metres.
- The “margin of tolerance” for logbook entries has been decreased from 20 to 10 percent.
- New rules will make the fish traceable for consumers throughout the whole chain.
- The powers of the Community Fisheries Control Agency (CFCA) will be strengthened: its inspectors will still not have authority beyond that of national inspectors, but they will be allowed to board vessels independently.
- Legal uncertainties have been cleared, so the Commission will in the future have the right to e.g. revoke subsidies from EU funds to punish member states who fails to live up to the regulation.
The latter was also part of a list of views that FISH and the Brussles-based Seas At Risk organisation jointly sent in a letter to the ministers and political advisors, EU officials and stakeholders before the meeting. Most of the six points made in the letter were supported in the Council’s decision, including a call for further measures to deal with the increasing cod discard problem in the Baltic Sea.
In a new collaborative effort, FISH and Seas At Risk plan to send out a similar letter, including more detailed briefings in annexes, ahead of each Fisheries Council meeting offering an enviromental perspective on relevant agenda points.