Last Friday the Swedish House of Europe hosted a seminar to explore the new EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) which will apply from January 1st 2014. Malin Wilhelmsson researcher at the Swedish Agency for marine and water management (SwAM) gave a broad overview of what the new CFP entails for Sweden with emphasis on the discard band and maximum sustainable yield (MSY). Wilhelmsson specifically pointed out that that MSY will not only apply to waters within the EU but also to EU-flagged vessels operating in waters outside of EU. This is a first step towards responsible sustainable fisheries of all EU-flagged vessels operating in both EU and non EU-waters. According to Isabella Lövin, MEP and member of the Greens, approximately 1% of EU:s catches comes from waters outside of the EU but stand for 24% of the total value of EU fisheries.
Tomas Dahlman, Head of hunting, fishing and Same unit at Ministry for Rural Affairs, revealed that the external dimension will be a priority for Sweden the coming years. It is clear that the external dimensions of the new CFP will lead to implications and changes at many different levels, the human rights clause for example may lead to determination of many fisheries agreements with developing countries.
The resent agreement of the EMFF was brought up where Henrik Loveby, President of Swedish Fishermen Federation (SFR), made it clear that the Swedish fishermen under SFR umbrella would like to see a vast majority of the fisheries subsidies gone. SRF want to see a change where the business builds on high quality of fish and seafood where the fishermen receive a fair price for its products – not a business that is based on subsidies to survive.
Christoffer Fjellner, EPP, Isabella Lövin, MEP, and Ellen Bruno, Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, are all supportive of the new CFP but stress that long-term commitment is key in order to make the CFP successful. Both Lövin and Bruno emphasized the important role NGOs played under negations particularity under the OCEAN2012 coalition and urged NGOs to keep pressing Member State governments to make them implement the new CFP.