In its official response to the Commission’s Green Paper, The British Government stresses regionalisation and “greater flexibility” on its wish list for the 2012 CFP.
The UK response, however, does not go as far as the Scottish earlier contention that the Common Fisheries Policy should be scrapped. The British vote in the Council is a bloc vote, and possible discrepancies between the two ministers are negotiated before each meeting. Scotland, a major fishing player in the EU, stands for two thirds of all UK landings.
In a press release, the British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) outlined changes it wanted to see when a new CFP is adopted in 2012, including:
- More responsibility at regional levels to bring decision making closer to those managing fisheries;
- Greater flexibility and clearer rights for fishermen to help them manage their businesses and fish quotas and to help reduce the waste of discards;
- More opportunity for industry and other partners to be involved in fisheries science and management and in marine policy making more generally;
- Long-term conservation of the marine environment, upon which healthy fish stocks depend, to be at the heart of a reformed CFP and support for wider environmental aims including conservation of important marine areas or species; and
- Extending the principles of sustainable and responsible fisheries internationally to secure global future food security.
“What fishermen need is to be able to plan for the long-term and adapt to changes in the economy and the environment, as any sound business should”, said UK Fisheries Minister Huw Irranca-Davies. “We want fishermen to have greater flexibility in how they fish, landing more but catching less, and to have greater freedom to transfer, buy or sell quota so allocations match what happens at sea, helping to reduce discards.”