Fisheries overhaul will be ‘disastrous’

Date: 06/06/02

By Simon Coss in Le Guilvinec

IT DOESN'T exactly rain hard in Le Guilvinec. It rains horizontally.

The wind roaring in from the angry Atlantic, where most of this small Breton port's fleet of fishing boats are out plying their trade, is splattering water against the window of the warm dockside office block I'm sitting in. Suddenly I'm glad I earn my living with a notebook, not a freezing nylon net.

Apparently the weather's actually quite good today. Just a bit of swell - nothing to get excited about. Whatever else you may say about fishermen, one thing is certain. They do not have a cushy job.

'It's difficult to say exactly but on average around ten boats are lost every year,' explains André Guéguen, director of the Organisation des Pêcheries de L'Ouest Bretagne (OPOB), which represents 360 self-employed fishing boat owners based in ports around Brittany's Finistère département. Guéguen is not a happy man. He says the European Commission's latest plans to overhaul the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) are ill-conceived, based on poor science and, even worse, portray members of his profession as selfish pillagers of a dwindling natural resource.

'This plan is disastrous. It presents fishermen as destroyers and that hurts,' he complains. 'Fishermen have the right and the need to be recognised. This is a noble profession and they have already made efforts to change the way they work.'

Guéguen warns that OPOB's members are extremely angry about the reforms, which many see as little more than an attempt to destroy their industry, and predicts a summer of angry demonstrations.

'It's clear there will be protests.

The fishermen won't let themselves be destroyed,' he says.

When Guéguen criticises the CFP, it is clear he has done his homework. His modern office is littered with photocopies and internet printouts of the sections of the EU's official journal that deal with fisheries reform.

He quotes Union directives and regulations with an attention to detail that would put some of the Commission's most obsessive legal nit-pickers to shame.

He also explains that he regularly visits both Paris and Brussels for talks with national and European fisheries experts and adds proudly that he recently arranged for EU fisheries supremo Franz Fischler to visit Le Guilvinec.

In other words, this is no stroppy provincial trade union operator out of touch with the political wranglings at the heart of the CFP reform debate.

Guéguen argues that there are two fundamental flaws with the reform plans Fischler presented earlier this month.

'The proposals are based on disputed and very old scientific evidence that doesn't take into account the profession's point of view at all,' he complains.

He also says that Fischler's plan seems to scrap a principle known as 'relative stability', which allocates how total EU fish catches should be divided up between the Union's fishing member states.

France is one of the biggest winners under the current set-up and not surprisingly Guéguen wants it to stay that way.

'I want to see a commitment to relative stability clearly set out in the final text that is adopted on fisheries policy after 2002,' he says, pointing out that Fischler's proposal is just the first stage in what will undoubtedly be a very heated debate between EU governments.

Feature on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).

European Commission: DG Fisheries and Maritime Affairs: Fisheries http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/index_en.htm

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