Next week, the Agriculture and Fisheries Council of the EU will attempt a decision on next years fishing opportunities for the Baltic Sea. The Commission proposal contains a mixed bag, dominated by cuts in quotas. Cod is likely to be the main focus – again.
On 22-23 October, the Agriculture and Fisheries Council of the EU meet in Luxembourg to discuss, among other things, next year’s quotas for fishing in the Baltic Sea as well as the EU/Norway agreement. The Commission proposal for next year (COM(2007)492) was published in early September and contains suggestions of an overall reduction of fishing opportunities in the Baltic Sea of around 10 per cent. This is, the Commission argues, completely in line with current policy on stock recovery and effort reductions, and efforts to make EU fisheries more profitable and competitive.
The most substantial cuts proposed are for the eastern and western cod stocks, both now below what is considered safe biological limits. This is a further reduction to the general principle of keeping fishing opportunities stable from year to year, with changes limited to ±15 per cent, reflecting the serious situation of both stocks. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) has again recommended a complete closure of the fishery targeting the eastern stock and a 50 per cent cut for the western stock.
The eastern stock has seen some years of higher recruitment but is still badly overfished and also subject to high levels of illegal fishing, which makes most efforts to manage the stock fairly meaningless. The western stock has generally been doing better, but is now showing evidence of very poor recruitment. There is also bad news regarding Baltic salmon stocks, particularly the populations in the main basin, where the survival of juvenile fish is very low. Most of the pelagic stocks are doing well, aside from the western herring stock which mixes with North Sea herring, but some reductions are proposed in order to stabilise long-term catch levels.
Preparations for the Council meeting have been ongoing since the proposal was published and it seems likely that a decision will be taken next week even though a few differences remain. This year, several countries around the Baltic support the Commission proposal to cut cod quotas, among them Sweden and Estonia, making Poland look increasingly isolated. For weeks now, Poland has contested the European Commission decision to close its cod fishery for the rest of the year due to high levels of unreported catches. It wants to see a whole new management regime for Baltic cod, abolishing the use of quotas altogether and is not supportive of any cuts for next year, exept for the western Baltic cod stock.
It seems as if Germany may also be reluctant to support reductions in cod quotas. Its fishing sector is certainly calling for stricter control and enforcement, halting the widespread illegal fishery, rather than Baltic wide cuts in fishing opportunities.
– If illegal fishing was reduced by half, there would be no problems with cod stocks, said Lothar Fischer, board member of the German Coastal Fishing Association to Deutsche Welle.
This position is, understandably, supported by many fishermen around the Baltic Sea. Unfortunately, if fish stocks are to be given a chance to recover, reductions may be necessary while improvements in the control and enforcements systems in the Member States are made. At the moment, the cod fisheries in Germany and Sweden have also been closed for the rest of the year, as it is estimated that they have already exhausted this year’s quotas through unreported catches. For Finland, the main issue is the proposed cuts in the salmon quota in the Gulf of Finland, which it wants to keep at the current level.
Around the EU, the food processing sector is getting worried about the ever increasing dependence on foreign supplies that the many fishing restrictions bring. The EU already has one of the world’s highest trade deficits in fish and fish products. According to Food Production Daily, EU imports in 2004 totalled 12 million Euro, with exports of only 2 million Euro. A massive 82 per cent of those imports were non-processed fish products. With the European Commission set to cut back on fishing to achieve stock recovery, this dependence is likely to continue to increase in the following years.