No decisions are expected on fisheries issues at the June EU Council meeting in Luxembourg, but CFP reform and future TACs will be up for debate.
At the Tuesday 29 luncheon – possibly over a seafood menu – the Fisheries ministers will discuss “Reform of the common market organisation (CMO) for fishery and aquaculture products”.
The talks on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), to be decided in 2012 and enforced in 2013, will be a follow-up on the 382 responses to the Commission Green Paper published in April 2009. Those responses were compiled by the Commission and originally scheduled to be presented to a Council meeting in April this year, which was cancelled in the wake of the Icelandic volcano ash cloud closing down European air space.
Preliminary discussions were instead held at the European Fisheries Directors’ meeting in La Coruña, Spain, in early May and at the following informal Ministers meeting at nearby Vigo.
Earlier this month FISH and Brussels-based Seas At Risk sent a letter to the Fisheries ministers, to European Parliamentarians and EU and national government officials, as well as other stakeholders, defining our standpoints on several the key issues when a new CFP is to be drawn up:
- Access: We are opposed to the compulsory implementation of Individually Transferable Rights (ITRs, sometimes also referred to as ITQs, as in Quotas). Instead, the current quota allocation system should be gradually phased out, and future access to fish resources should be based on the choice of environmentally and socially sustainable practices.
- Overcapacity: The reformed CFP must reduce fishing capacity to ensure sustainability, not only in terms of size but also in terms of characteristics. The reduction targets, preferably set on a fishery-by-fishery basis, should lead to the removal of the most destructive and unsustainable practices, whilst promoting low impact fishing methods, gears and practices.
- Subsidies: The EU should seize the opportunity of the CFP reform to end all subsides that contribute to maintaining and increasing overcapacity and overfishing. In the future, subsidies should include funding of e.g. control and enforcement, as well as stock assessments. Community financial assistance should be conditional upon Member States’ adequate implementation of the CFP.
As for the discussions on the 2011 fishing opportunities, the background is the Commission’s Communication sent out in May, that declaration in turn a step in the efforts to avoid in the future the reoccurring annual haggling over quotas at the October-December Council meetings, as well as generally promoting enhanced sustainability.
The SARFISH letter welcomed the Commission’s “clear commitment to setting sustainable fishing opportunities in line with scientific advice and the precautionary approach, as well as to fully implement long-term management plans”.
FISH and Seas At Risk however wished to draw attention to the following points:
- We support the commitment that all stocks are exploited at Maximum sustainable yield (MSY) by 2015, but insist that MSY should not be considered the ultimate target, only an intermediate one for stocks that are overfished. More precautionary targets, such as Maximum Economic Yield (MEY) should already be considered for stocks that are close to or at MSY today.
- The number of stocks that have no advice due to data deficiency has increased substantially, and stock assessment methods are not adequate in all areas and need to be addressed urgently.
- TACs set in excess of scientific advice dropped from 2009 to 2010 but with 34 per cent are still too high. There is an urgent need to align TACs with the scientific advice for all stocks.
- The sustainable management of deep-sea fisheries has been the subject of extensive debate and negotiation at the United Nations General Assembly over the past several years. Surprisingly, the Communication fails to mention, much less meet, the EU commitment to the actions agreed by the General Assembly to manage deep-sea fisheries sustainably. Indeed, anything less than having those stipulations in place would be a failure to follow through on the EU’s international commitments to effectively manage deep-sea fisheries sustainably.