The Green Paper published today contains some wide-ranging, very positive suggestions for how to improve management of EU fisheries, while other areas are touched upon without enough detail to judge effectiveness, concludes Niki Sporrong, Director of the Fisheries Secretariat.
At noon today, the European Commission published its Green Paper on Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (COM(2009)163). It provides a brighter vision for the EU fisheries sector, as well as a stark summary of the problems ailing the failing policy. It then sets out the main structural failings and a range of suggestions on how to address them.
The previous reform of the CFP, concluded in 2002, did bring about some more long-term management of EU fish stocks, strengthened the environmental components of the policy, formed the basis for setting up the Regional Advisory Councils to improve stakeholder involvement, and marked an end to subsidies for new-builds and capacity increasing modernisations measures. However, this was far from enough and it did not bring about the fundamental changes that were needed in order to make the CFP more successful. The fleet policy component was particularly week and non-transparent, with its new entry/exit scheme and the concurrent failures in national reporting.
Today, the Commission states that the EU fleet overcapacity “remains the fundamental problem of the CFP”, and identifies it as one of the root causes of the overfished stocks, the poor economic performance of the EU fishing fleet and the heavy reliance on subsidies. A particularly stark sentence tells us that: “In several Member States, it has been estimated that the cost of fishing to the public budgets exceeds the total value of the catches.”
This is not good news to the public, whether as taxpayers or consumers. It is therefore understandable that as well as looking for ways to simply manage EU fisheries in a more sustainable way, the Commission is also looking for solutions that will cost less and be easier to implement. Whether that will be true remains to be seen, but more effectiveness and simplification is definitely needed.
Too many boats chasing too few fish
The fleet overcapacity is indeed the key issue and a root cause of many of the other problems, including the continued widespread occurrence of illegal and unreported fishing. It is also the politically most uncomfortable issue to address. Who wants to make decisions about which boats have to go and which can stay, with the political costs that may bring?
The Commission claims several mechanisms have been tried in the EU to bring capacity down, but they have all been ineffective and costly. It is now looking to transferable fishing rights to solve this issue. But as the Commission points out, they may lead to ownership concentration and pose a particular threat to small-scale coastal fisheries. In addition, transferable rights do not automatically address the other objectives of the CFP.
– It would be dangerous to consider transferable fishing rights the only solution to capacity reduction, even though they are likely to form part of the future fisheries policy, says Niki Sporrong. We believe other mechanisms are needed as well to secure capacity reduction, however politically uncomfortable that may be.
Objectives and decision-making to be addressed
An important part of the Green Paper is the sections on objectives and the decision-making framework. There is an urgent need for prioritisation of the objectives of the CFP, making clear that without environmental sustainability there will be no social and economic sustainability. The Commission sets out to achieve this. It also looks to change the decision-making process in order to minimise the influence of short-term national considerations on the policy. This is a real problem that currently leads to changes in most ambitious Commission proposals that in the end render them ineffective or weak.
How much support the Commission will receive for these suggestions from the Member States is still unclear, but the possibility of co-decision by the European Parliament offers some hope. It will simply become impossible to micro-manage fisheries on the EU level, in terms of the time and resources needed. Several alternatives are set out, but important questions remain to be solved and will no doubt be one focus of the debate initiated today.
– The current decision-making system really needs to be changed in order to resolve some of today’s shortcomings, says Niki Sporrong. One possibility would be to set quotas based on scientific advice, as is now done in the US, and finally put an end to the political haggling at the end of each year.
Other positive aspects
Some other positive aspirations are the suggestion to differentiate between small-scale coastal fleets and the larger, more industrial part of the sector, as well as proper integration of environmental principles such as implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. However, these sections are maybe less well-developed and this makes it difficult to judge how the Commission wants to go about this. Even less thinking is provided on trade and aquaculture.
– Overall, the Green Paper is a good starting point for discussions but the thinking on the implementation of many of the issues will need to be developed much further in the years to come, concludes Niki Sporrong.