Today, around 200 Polish fishermen gathered in Gdansk to protest sanctions– some reaching 350 000 PLN—imposed on them as a result of illegal Baltic cod fishing in 2007, which took place despite the European Commission (EC) mandated closure of the Baltic cod fisheries. The man behind the protests is Grzegorz Hałubek, the Chair of the Polish Fishermen’s Union, who has been fronting the protests since the beginning.
After many years of disputes over this issue between the Polish Government, the European Commission and the fishermen, Grzegorz Hałubek, on behalf of the Polish Fishermen’s Union, presented a formal letter— containing about 70 signatories– to Prime Minister Tusk. The letter demands to formally revoke all the imposed sanctions and call on a special Commission, made up of all political parties, to commence an investigation in this matter.
The main sources of contention, and thus a basis to revoke the sanctions, presented by Hałubek on this issue are:
- The Polish government did not implement a formal cod ban in Western Baltic after the EU decided to close the cod fisheries, which, according to Hałubek, only suggests that the national cod quota has not been exhausted.
- The Regulation 804/2007 only relates to the cod quotas in the Eastern Baltic and thus cannot be extended to the Western Baltic.
- Article 1 of the Regulation 804/2007 clearly states that the Eastern Baltic (area 25-32) cod quota has only been partially exhausted, which proves that the total quota for cod for 2007 was not exhausted.
- The Polish government circulated documents in Poland and at the European Union level, which indicated that the cod quota in 2007 has not been exhausted. These documents have been circulated in Główny Urząd Statystyczny (GUS, Central Statistical Office) and EUROSTAT.
It is estimated that the fines can lead to the bankruptcy of 70 fishing vessel owners and their families. This means that at least 300 jobs are on the line in areas heavily dependent on fisheries, according to Dziennik Bałtycki.
To ease the pressure on cod, the Polish government implemented the so-called ‘Trójpolówka’ system, which means that one third of the fleet goes off to fish for cod, while the rest of the vessels stay in port and receive compensation to stay in port. This system expires at the end of 2011, and the fishermen are asking: ‘now what?’. According to reports, Hałubek has been critical of this system as well, condemning the process which, he believes, led to the under-utilization of the 2010 cod quotas and to the low prices paid out for cod.
The matter goes back to 2005 and 2006, when the European Commission (EC) fisheries inspectors have conducted more than 200 vessel inspections in the six cod-fishing Baltic EU Member States (MS). During the inspections, the EC control officials compared the catches during the inspections to the reports of four other landings carried out by the same vessels. The differences were striking. For Polish vessels, the difference was 48,7 %, Swedish 21,4 %, Lithuanian 15,6 %, German 13,6 %, Danish 12,7 % and Latvian vessels 7,5 %.
The EU Commission evaluation report in the matter, stated that ‘the serious level of unrecorded catches was inter alia as a result of the poor inspection and surveillance in particular, the poor quality and frequency of inspection in place to ensure the accuracy of the recorded data’
When interviewed in 2006 by Gazeta Wyborcza, Grzegorz Hałubek, the Chair of the Polish Fishermen´s Union, very openly admitted that: ”All Polish fishermen fish above their quotas forced upon them by the EU Commission, because if they would abide by the quotas the fishermen would die of hunger”. He also confirmed that, ”nobody abides by the quotas, therefore the (Polish) fisheries inspectors have stopped inspecting. A few years ago they still controlled the landings. Bribes were common. Not anymore, since they would have to prosecute all polish fishermen, and no authority would like to have such a problem.”
Consequently, and according to the findings of the EC inspectors, on July 9, 2007, the European Commission released Regulation 804/2007, in which all Polish vessels were called on to cease all fishing activities for cod in the Baltic Sea between 11 July, 2007 and 31 December, 2007. While it was clear that the Baltic cod stocks were in a threatened state, it was estimated that the amount of landed Eastern Baltic cod was three times more than the reported amounts in Poland, and the cod quotas allotted to Poland for that year were already exhausted. Despite the severity of the situation and despite the ban, Polish fishermen continued to fish. Legally mandated sanctions were imposed on those who continued to fish. Controversy ensued.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development did not comment on the matter of protests, although they have released a public statement on their website (in Polish), stating that the ban indeed was implemented after the EU mandated closure was announced– and after the EU inspectors declared overfishing on a massive scale in Poland– and various methods of handling the sanctions were presented to fishermen (including reductions/revoking, and ability to pay back in installments).