Yacine Le Forestier Yahoo News 21 Apr 09;
BRUSSELS (AFP) – The EU Commission is set to unveil its vision for a sustainable fishing industry on Wednesday, seeking cuts in fleets and proposing a fishing quota trading system that is not to everyone's taste.
The ideas are included in a draft paper, seen by AFP on Tuesday, that is due to be formally adopted by the EU executive on Wednesday.
While seeking to fix more long-term methods to tackle the growing problem of overfishing, the Green Paper on reforming the European Union's fisheries policy risks inflaming discontent which has already led to French fishermen crippling English Channel ports with a three-day blockade last week.
The need for a policy overhaul is underlined in the paper.
"European fish stocks have been overfished for decades and the fishing fleets remain too large for the available resources," said the draft paper.
"Too many vessels chase too few fish," it added.
"The community's fishing fleet is now two-thirds bigger than the sea can offer in resources," explained one commission official, commenting on the report which could yet be tweaked ahead of its formal publication.
One remedy which the commission would like the 27 EU member states to consider is to liberalise the quota system to encourage sustainable fishing.
Under the current system, EU nations haggle at the end of each year on how to share out fishing quotas among themselves that are then distributed among their national fishing fleets.
Brussels is now leaning towards a system already used in Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Iceland whereby governments hand out "individual and transferable" quotas to fishermen on a one off basis.
These can then be bought and sold on the private market.
Supporters of this kind of system say it encourages fishing boats to operate in a more responsible manner, aware that the stocks of fish they are managing are their nest-egg, for when they retire and sell up for instance.
Such a mechanism could also lead to a gradual reduction in fishing fleet numbers, with the smaller, less profitable operators selling their rights to the bigger more efficient fleets.
"Use of market instruments such as transferable rights to fishing may be a more efficient and less expensive way to reduce overcapacity and one for which the industry has to take more responsibility," the commission opines.
At the same time the commission wants to retain "coastal, small-scale and recreation fishermen alongside larger industries," by using different management schemes with more of a social focus for the small operators.
At present, the commission says 88 percent of European fish stocks are being overfished, with 30 percent already "outside safe biological limits," meaning they may not be able to replenish.
Some EU nations including Denmark and the Netherlands are in favour of the tradeable quotas scheme.
However others, notably France, oppose the idea of turning fisheries into another vehicle for the speculators.
"There is too much risk, possibilities for speculation, of elimination of small fishing outfits," one French diplomat complained.
The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) calls the Green Paper "commendably honest" in admitting that radical reform is needed to save Europe's fish stocks and create a profitable fisheries sector.
Up till now the EU Commission and nations "have failed our fisheries and failed our industry. But now they can no longer preach an agenda of reform and ignore their own words when hard choices need to be made," the group said.
At present in Europe, nearly two-thirds of fish stocks are in decline, WWF added, including some of the most popular species like cod, plaice and sole.
Environmental group Greenpeace set out its own blueprint including the rule that "fishing activities should only be licensed subject to a prior assessment of their environmental impact."
