Germany, holder of the BALTFISH presidency, will take initiatives to improve the transparency of the regional group.
“We will contact the EU commission and ask if they can host a website for BALTFISH”, said the chair Walter Dübner during a seminar at the EU Baltic Sea Strategy Forum in Stockholm.
At a recent seminar organised by the Fisheries Secretariat, BALTFISH, the regional body for fisheries management in the Baltic Sea region, and how it can integrate marine management and lead the implementation of ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) was discussed.
The panel was comprised of Walter Dübner, current Chair of BALTFISH from the German administration, along with Jens Holm (V), member of the EU affairs, and Environment and agriculture committees in the Swedish parliament, Coalition Clean Baltic (CCB) representative Nils Höglund, and Marcin Rucinski from Low Impact Fishers of Europe (LIFE) and former BALTFISH Chair during the Polish Presidency.
BALTFISH was established in 2009 and is a de facto decision-making body. The High Level Group of BALTFISH is comprised of the Fisheries Directors from each of the eight EU Member States bordering the Baltic Sea. If the body takes a unanimous decision, it is rubberstamped by the Commission and Council. There is also a BALTFISH Forum at which regional stakeholders, mainly from the Baltic Sea Advisory Council (BSAC), can attend and provide input.
After the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), which came into force at the start of 2014 there were three significant changes to Baltic fisheries management. Firstly, regionalisation became embedded in the legislation. A consequence has been the devolvement of some decision-making from Brussels and the Commission to Member States and BALTFISH. Secondly, long-term management plans were to become a priority again, particularly once the institutional deadlock between the European Parliament and Council was broken after a European Court of Justice ruling in favour of co-decision. This meant that the long awaited Baltic management plan could be finalised. Thirdly, a legislative requirement to implement the ecosystem approach to fisheries management was reiterated.
These factors have helped pave the way for the development and implementation of Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management, EBFM, which aims to integrate habitat values, multispecies perspectives, and an understanding of ecosystem processes and services into the decision-making process. At the same time, however, BALTFISH is still an undeveloped institution that is not yet capable of taking a forward-thinking stance on management issues. At present, the bulk of work carried out relates to the annual quota negotiations.
One problem is that member states civil servants, even in large states like Germany, gets overburdened with work when chairing BALTFISH.
“This is a major challenge for us. It is hard to recruit and hire more people just for the chairmanship, even if we had the budget to do so. Now we have been cutting down on staff instead”, says Walter Dübner.
There are several structural challenges that need to be overcome before EBFM can be implemented through BALTFISH. Firstly, governance relating to transparency issues and the handover between Presidencies need to be improved. The Presidency rotates on an annual basis and there is a lack of coherence between on going projects between Member States and how active BALTFISH is.
With regard to transparency, for many years FishSec and other stakeholders have pointed to the lack of website, minutes from meeting, agendas being circulated in a timely manner, absence of publicly available information as not meeting expectations for how a managerial body should conduct itself. As Jens Holm pointed out during the meeting “an organisation today not having a webpage is like a restaurant not having a menu”.
The current chair, Walter Dübner, made a commitment during the meeting to explore how this could be resolved. Discussions have since taken place with the Commission that information could be hosted on the DG Mare website but a decision has yet to be taken.
“This is a decision that my successor Maja Kirchner will have to take”, says Illona Jepsona, outgoing fisheries management director for the Atlantic, North Sea and Baltic Sea region at the EU Commission.
The lack of transparency has also had the effect of widening the divide between politicians and civil servants, with reduced oversight it has become more difficult for politicians to provide a clear mandate for negotiations.
Another commitment made during the seminar was for improved cooperation between HELCOM and BALTFISH. HELCOM had a close cooperation, and mutual observer arrangements, with the BALTFISH predecessor, the International Baltic Sea Fisheries Commission (IBSFC), until its closure in 2005. This cooperation has yet to be re-established since the creation of BALTFISH.
“A formal arrangement for direct information exchange would enable exploring synergies between activities taking place within the different bodies and remove uncertainties regarding overlap of activities, for the benefit of national work. A regular information exchange and clarification of tasks would contribute to making the Baltic Sea one of the world’s leading regions in integrated management, especially in the field of environment and fisheries”, writes HELCOM in their proposal a “Plan for closer cooperation between marine environment and fisheries management in the Baltic Sea”.
A first step towards establishing such arrangement was taken at the recent HELCOM Heads of delegation meeting 14-15 December 2016.
And when BALTFISH finds a way to finally set up a homepage Nils Höglund from CCB will provide the best possible URL:s.
I have bought both baltfish.eu and balfish.com. They are secured. CCB will hand over these addresses without any charge as soon as BALTFISH is ready.