At noon today, the Commission finally published its first proposal on reform of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy
– The current system is not working for sustainability, Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki began her press conference. She went on to say that with overfished stocks and low profitability in the sector, along with subsidy and import dependence “business as usual is not an option anymore”.
The proposals published today are an attempt from the Commission to break the vicious circle of the current CFP. According to Commissioner Damanaki, the modeling that has been done shows that without a substantial reform, only 8 of 136 EU fish stocks would be sustainably fished by 2022.
The Commissioner highlighted three key concepts in her speech: sustainability, efficiency and coherence.
In order to ensure sustainability of EU fish stocks, the Commission is proposing legally binding targets to fish stocks at maximum sustainable yield (MSY) by 2015, as well as a move to catch quotas rather than landing quotas. Perhaps more controversial, however, is a strong push to promote and develop aquaculture both in marine and inland waters. New funding will be made available for this in the upcoming financial instrument.
The perhaps most controversial part of the reform proposals – the mandatory transferable fishing concessions (TFCs) – is part of the efforts to increase efficiency, together with an attempt to decentralize the policy on a seabasin basis. Commissioner Damanaki stressed that “fish stocks are a public resource” and that safeguards would be put in place to prevent the concentration of fishing rights, but in the proposals all of these things are left to Member States to consider, while the allocation of TFCs will be mandatory for all vessels using active gear and all vessels larger than 12 metres for a period of at least 15 years. Even safeguards to prevent financial speculation will be left up to Member States.
Finally, on coherence, Commissioner Damanaki talked about creating a level playing field that would make the EU sector more competitive, including a strengthening of mandatory labeling requirements, as well as equal requirements for control and enforcement in non-EU waters. The same rules would apply everywhere in the future.
This first package on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) includes an overall communication (COM(2011)417), a proposal for a new basic Regulation (COM(2011)425), a proposal for a new Regulation on the common organization of the markets (COM(2011), a communication on the external dimension (COM(2011)424), as well as the obligatory report on conservation of the resources required under the current basic Regulation (EC 2371/2002) and impact assessments.