In a sharp attack on the “wasteful” practice of discards, Commissioner Jorge Borg told the Union Ministers that “there is absolutely no excuse not to tackle this problem head-on now”.
Stressing that “discards is an issue that I personally attach great importance to”, he added in a statement to the May Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting:
“Consumers are making more and more informed choices every day. It won’t be long before they decide that they are simply not going to buy a fish which was caught in a fishing operation where a certain quantity of perfectly marketable fish was chucked overboard. We should not wait around for this day to come, we need to start acting now”.
Commissioner Borg mentioned several measures that he said should be implied already next year, including:
- A high-grading ban in all Union waters. Such a ban is already in place in the North Sea and Skagerrak. High-grading is a form of discards made for financial reasons.
- Member States should license vessels in a way that ensures that only vessels having appropriate quotas have the opportunity to fish for regulated species.
- The fishing industry itself should continue efforts to improve the selectivity of fishing gear.
“And, last but not least, reducing overall fishing effort will also decrease discards”, he added.
In that context, Denmark’s Fisheries Minister Eva Kjer Hansen told her colleagues about a pilot project presently running there that would allocate quotas based on the amount of fish caught rather than the amount landed in port. The participants are allowed slightly larger quotas, and what really comes up in the nets is monitored by on-board cameras.
Ms Kjer Hansen claimed that fishery is more precise now. “They are looking more for those species they want to catch,” she added.
On another agenda point, the Council exchanged views on the Commission’s Green Paper on the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) published in April. A new CFP will be implied in 2012.
A press release from the Council noted that “member states stressed the importance of close consultations with stakeholders in order to ensure that the latter accept the outcome of the reform”. It added that the results of the consultation process will be published next year.