During the past two weeks, both the European Parliament and Council have made progress with the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) subsidy package, and expect to conclude a deal late this year. The EMFF will provide €6.5 billion of aid, from the public purse, to the industry and Member States for 2014-2020. However, there are serious concerns over the way politicians envisage how these funds should be spent.
Worryingly, money for the construction of new vessels and for the modernisation of existing boats is on the table, in all €1.6 billion may be spent on up to 20,000 new fishing vessels.
The EU removed construction funds from its budget during the 2002 reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) and reaffirmed this position last year at the Rio+20 summit. To go ahead with this policy would violate existing international agreements and be indicative of the managerial failures that have led EU fisheries to be in such poor condition when compared with those of Norway, Australia, New Zealand or the USA.
Given that half of all EU stocks have insufficient scientific data to assess their health, and over 40% of data rich stocks are “outside safe biological limits”, priority should be given to subsidies that improve data collection and control and enforcement. Moreover, NGOs have pushed for policies which reward improvements in stocks, such as allowing access to EMFF money once fish stocks have been restored to target levels.
HELCOM targets for the Baltic Sea, as well as the new CFP basic regulation, lay down clear targets for fisheries management. Both contain commitments to revive fish stocks above levels which produce their maximum sustainable yields, a term denoting fishing pressure which does not diminish fish population. Once these targets have been reached, public money could be used to reward those who have contributed to achieving these improvements. However, the current positions of the European Parliament and Council seem to say the taxpayer will give you the money now and perhaps results will be delivered later.