At the Fisheries Council meeting today, Commissioner Damanaki made clear that the Commission is willing to listen to the Member States and revise its approach to the EU discard ban, moving from a species approach to a fishery-based approach.
On the initiative of the Danish Presidency, the Fisheries Council has debated the proposed discard ban this morning. To prepare for this discussion, the Presidency had sent out a set of questions for the Member States to consider. The meeting then heard each country making a statement on its position. This approach taken by the Danish Presidency clearly enabled the Council to move forward on one of the really sticky parts of the reform proposals.
There was a general consensus in the Council that a solution needs to be found to the widespread discards in EU fisheries. However, many Mediterranean countries expressed concerns about its application in the Mediterranean and highlighted the need for a regional, phased in approach, taking the social and economic effects into consideration.
Overall, it was clear that a majority of countries would be willing to support a discard ban as long as a flexible, step-wise approach was used. Aside from a fishery-by-fishery approach, most countries also called for the solution to be regional, rather than EU wide. Most also wanted an exception for species with high survival rates. A number of countries called for the ban to be linked to long-term management plans (LTMPs) – or multi-annual plans (MAPs) as they will be called in the future. This is problematic, however, as no LTMPs have been adopted since the Lisbon Treaty came into force due to a power struggle between the Council and the European Parliament on decision-making powers and content.
Many Member States highlighted that improving selectivity was key to this whole issue, and must be part of the package, in order to avoid catching juvenile fish. It was also said again and again that the EU should make efforts to avoid creating a market for undersized, juvenile fish. In order to achieve that, the new minimum conservation reference sizes must be closely linked to work with selectivity in gear. The importance of working together with the sector and scientists to achieve this was also stressed.
When summing up the discussion at the end of the session, Commissioner Damanaki thanked Member States for the fruitful debate and the progress made. She said the Commission had picked up a few points for further work: 1) that there is general support for a ban as long as a step-by-step approach is used – but that there for the Commission there would have to be an “end of the line” – ie a clear timetable with a final date for implementation; 2) that a fishery-by-fishery approach is needed and that the Commission will work on a roadmap for this; and 3) that Member States are calling for a greater role of scientific advice. The first steps to address that was to ask the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF) to create a list of species with high survival rates that would be exempt from the discard ban, and then to urgently make an assessment of selective gear that can be put to use.