At the working group meeting of the Baltic Sea Advisory Council (BSAC) in Copenhagen on 16 August, the Commission proposal, published in early March, on the Technical Measures Framework (TMF) was discussed for the first time by the Advisory Council.
Working group chair, Michael Andersen of the Danish Fishermen Producer Organisation, DFPO, recommended that no output be sent to the Commission or EU institutions, since he concluded “that we (the BSAC) cannot produce a common outcome from this meeting”. The Commission did not send any representatives to the meeting.
It is still not clear if BSAC will provide any input to the EU debate on the TMF or whether there will be an agreed position on the legislative proposal.
The TMF sets the framework for when, where and how fishing will take place in the Baltic Sea and the rest of the EU. However, only four of the twenty-five organisations from the Advisory Council’s Executive Committee responded with comments to the Secretariat’s summary, despite the deadline being twice extended.
Within BSAC, there were some clear faultlines regarding the TMF proposal. Small-scale fishermen representatives and environmental organisations supported targets regarding improved selectivity with regard to minimum conservation reference sizes (Article 4), as well as positive incentives to avoid habitat destruction and reward catch composition in line with pre-agreed targets (Article 19). These views were not shared by industry representatives from Denmark who argued that all these regulations should be scrapped.
Common ground was found regarding flexibility of permissible gears. There is unanimity within BSAC that the current regulations are too prescriptive and hamper innovation. The sticking point was whether new gears should be more selective and less damaging to the ecosystem than those already in place, and how these results can be evaluated. The Commission proposal specifies that gear modifications must improve on existing performance, this was criticised by larger-scale industry representatives.
Proposals relating to closed areas were also discussed. Andersen, DFPO, was strongly against these regulations although there is a lack of information pointing to evidence of no benefit.
While it was useful to discuss our respective views and positions in the roundtable format, the lack of output from BSAC to inform the wider debate is regrettable, particularly as the TMF will be discussed at the next BALTFISH meeting.
FishSec and European ENGOs have produced a Joint NGO position paper on the Commission’s TMF proposal that will be circulated to EU member states and other stakeholders before the BALTFISH forum and high level group meeting on August 30 in Frankfurt, Germany. We assume the fisheries industry will inform both the Commission and Member States on their positions. The question is why BSAC is unable to act as an advisory council.