Feeling ”truly disappointed”, Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki has urged Mediterranean member states to finally apply the 2006 fisheries regulation. “The transition period is over”, she added grimly.
Of those fish stocks in the Mediterranean that have been scientifically assessed at all – the majority haven’t – more than 54 percent have been found overfished.
In December 2006, the European Council adopted the so-called ‘Mediterranean Regulation’, intended to “improve fisheries management in order to achieve sustainable fisheries, protect the fragile marine environment and restore fish stocks to healthy levels”.
The member states were given a transition period until 1 June 2010 to get prepared for the implementation.
“Member States have had over three years to get ready and comply with the rules”, Ms. Damanaki pointed out in a statement marking the end of the transition period, noting that the 2006 regulation was really a compromise after the Commission had put forth “a more ambitious proposal”.
“It is difficult to accept that Member States are not willing or able today to implement even the 2006 compromise. I am truly disappointed”, she added.
The Commission now underlines that the regulation is fully in force as of 1 June, and “must be implemented”.
“However, Member States so far have largely failed to take all necessary measures to ensure full implementation and the Commission deeply regrets this”, it added.
The Mediterranean Regulation takes steps towards mainstreaming environmental concerns into fisheries policy and establishing a network of protected areas where fishing activities are restricted to protect nursery areas, spawning grounds and the marine ecosystem. It also sets out technical rules on allowed fishing methods and distance from the coast and provides for protected species and habitats.
“The state of several fish stocks in the Mediterranean is alarming, and fishermen are catching less every year. We need to reverse the worrying trend of unsustainable fishing practices and impoverishment of marine resources and we need to do it now. But for this to happen, everybody must take their responsibilities and abide by the agreed rules”, Commissioner Damanaki said.
Meanwhile, protesting fishermen in Italy, Greece, France, Spain and Malta claimed that the end to those exceptions they had had during the transition period would now mean that they would have to quit their trade.
Alarms seemed to be loudest in Italy, where food lovers feared they would now lose several dishes made with small sea catches: “Mixed fried fish will disappear from the table,” read one headline in the Turin daily La Stampa.
“It is clear that we will fish less,” said Giampaolo Buonfiglio of AGCI Agrital, a co-op organisation, to the New York Times, adding that small trawlers would be particularly hard hit. But the full socioeconomic impact of the changes to fishing practices and to the market would only be known in a few months, he said.
Oliver Drewes, a spokesman for Commissioner Damanaki, answered the newspaper that the protests “brought out the tension between the ‘short-term and the long-term issues in the debate.’”
The regulation, he pointed out, was drafted as a “call for a long-term sustainable approach so that fisherman can fish in the future, and so that they can preserve their local cultures and traditions.”