Two of the main industry organisations in EU fisheries have presented a positioning document on the Commission’s CFP reform Green Paper, calling it “provocative” although “interesting”, but “painting too bleak a picture of the situation, in a pessimistic or even alarmist manner”.
Europêche, the umbrella organisation for EU fisheries enterprises, and COGECA, organising Europe’s fishing and aquaculture cooperatives, have met with Commissioner Joe Borg to present the 20+ page paper with their positions on the upcoming CFP reform.
The document, presented by Europêche President Javier Garat and his COGECA counterpart Giampaolo Buonfiglio, was in response to the Commission’s Green Paper, published this spring, the “official” starting signal for discussions leading up to the new EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) in 2012.
On the “too bleak a picture”, the document went on to say that this “needs to be enhanced in the future CFP, with the Commission adopting a more positive and nuanced communication strategy”.
“Not everything is negative – starting with fish stocks which vary considerably across marine regions and fish species”, it said, adding that “the Commission should avoid generalising the situation regarding overfishing and fleet overcapacity, at least basing its judgement on studies or technical reports and high-quality independent scientific opinions compiled for individual fishing zones and fisheries”.
The organisations highlighted what they saw as positive results of the current CFP of 2002, and said that from that perspective it is “particularly regrettable” that the reform of the Union’s Common Market Organisation (CMO) has been postponed, while the reform of the fisheries control system has been “hurried”. Europêche and COGECA said they still believed the new Control Regulation, which was adopted by the Council almost as they met with the Commissioner, should have been coordinated with the CFP reform in 2012.
“Europêche and COGECA cannot accept that the blame for the majority of ills is systematically placed on the fishing industry, or that the industry is in most cases held solely responsible for the damage to the marine environment and is the only one to carry the burden of the reforms simply because the effect of the other human activities on the marine ecosystems evade any common policy really integrated”, they concluded.
In detail, the paper included replies and industry positions on issues such as the responsibility of the sector in the future CFP, regionalised management model, fleet overcapacity, a differentiated regime for the small-scale fisheries and high sea fisheries, transferable fishing rights, market policy, the external dimension of the CFP, scientific research, structural funds, and many more.