Plotting a sea-change for Europe

Two MEPs discuss maritime policy

Struan Stevenson

The importance of the sea to Europe is fundamental, with key activities such as fishing, aquaculture, energy production, shipping, recreation, tourism and defence all implicated. The European Commission’s plans for an EU?maritime strategy represent a crucial step towards dealing with climate change, pollution, coastal erosion, rising sea-levels and disruptive development, all of which could have a devastating impact on EU citizens.

The maritime strategy offers an opportunity to integrate the plethora of laws and regulations that cover European maritime interests. It proposes new ways to protect and enhance the marine heritage, and at the same time underlines the importance of the sustainable exploitation of our seas and oceans. The co-ordination of the different sectors and activities is therefore essential if we are to realise the full potential of Europe’s maritime interests and the vision of clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas.

As rapporteur for the opinion from the Parliament’s fisheries committee on the strategy, I have aimed to produce a report which takes into account the key interests of the fisheries sector, as well as bringing them into context with the areas of transport, environment and industry.

In 20 years’ time it is likely that climate change will have altered which fish stocks are found where in EU waters. New species may have arrived and former species departed to colder climes. Therefore, without effectively tackling the fundamental causes of climate change now, the entire EU maritime policy may be rendered worthless.

Fishing itself will have to be restricted in future through a precautionary approach ensuring that we maintain healthy ecosystems and protect rare, vulnerable or valued species and habitats. This will inevitably mean more environmental protection than before, involving a network of protected areas across EU waters and a system of integrated coastal zone management, to ensure that we put a stop to the wanton degradation of habitats and sharp decline in biodiversity, which has been all too commonplace in recent years.

The Commission will also have to strive harder to end the disgraceful by-catch and discards problem which is a key consequence of the Common Fisheries Policy’s regime of total allowable catches and quotas. Environmental pollution of the seas arising from agricultural run-off, sewage or industrial effluents, or indeed litter is also an increasing hazard, severely affecting the fisheries sector. Action is required to control such pollutants and to warn tourists and ocean-going vessels of the long-term dangers caused by the careless discarding of refuse into the sea.

Shipping also contributes to marine pollution and potentially to upsetting the ecosytem, through the introduction of alien species in discharged ballast water and the use of chemicals that affect hormones of fish, in anti-fouling paints. Oil slicks are also a major maritime hazard and the trans-shipment of oil or other toxic cargoes at sea must in future be restricted to carefully designated zones.

Similarly, waste, including nutrients, chemicals and medicine from fish farms can have a negative impact on the marine environment. As marine fish stocks diminish worldwide, the importance of fish farming continues to increase in significance. The EU has been at the forefront of this exciting development and can maintain its leadership position, providing healthy and nutritious food to an eager public, if fish farms are allowed to develop in a way that is compatible with other coastal and maritime uses.

We must also improve overall surveillance of our oceans. This is of vital importance in the context of illegal immigration and terrorism, but it is also necessary to counter illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing and to help raise standards of maritime safety. The EU Fisheries Control Agency in Vigo should co-ordinate activities with all coastal member states to ensure a joined-up approach to maritime surveillance. There should be equal enforcement throughout the EU with equal penalties and sanctions being applied in national courts. Currently there is great inequality in the enforcement of conservation measures and in the treatment of offenders.

• UK centre-right (EEP-ED) MEP Struan Stevenson is a member of the Parliament’s fisheries committee and rapporteur on the maritime green paper.

Paolo Casaca

When he arrived in Brussels back in 2004, one of the first promises made by the newly appointed President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso was a ‘maritime policy’ for Europe. Indeed, a maritime policy for Portugal had been one of the most emblematic projects of Barroso as prime minister and it was only natural that he decided to bring this project with him to Europe.

When the audition of Commissioner Joe Borg took place, I understood that the priority and enthusiasm for that policy had somewhat fizzled out and that the job of the appointed commissioner for maritime affairs was to make a feasibility study of the idea of such a portfolio and integrate policy rather than really launching one.

In the College of Commissioners where portfolios had been carefully balanced according to influences and weights of their holders, it was no easy task to make such an unexpected reshuffle. Moreover, a marine strategy had been carefully prepared in the previous years and any new maritime policy had to adapt to this reality.

The calendar for the discussion of the initiative was therefore established in such a way that no practical consequence could be extracted before the end of the Barroso mandate. The discussion of the green paper on the maritime policy is scheduled for mid-2007, three years after Barroso took up office, with only two years left for the launching of a set of proposals in a white paper and to discuss them.

In the meantime, the marine strategy is making its way, although even more slowly than its younger offspring, the maritime policy, with no budget of its own and with a lengthy calendar (although I do remember having seen some objectives set for 2020).

The whole of the sea business is therefore brewing calmly, with fisheries policy eager not to be swallowed by the environment policy and its objectives, while denouncing the transport, tourism, urban and agricultural sectors as the real culprits of the appalling degradation of resources and pollution of the seas. The transport and tourism sectors call the attention to their overwhelming economic weight, farming is just too concerned with mightier problems, territorial planning is little more than a talking shop and the environment policy seems to have been too concerned with climate change to think of anything else.

From my perspective, it is very hard to understand why Europe claims to have exclusive competence for the management of the biological resources of the sea, but it seems to understand competence as a synonym for issue papers, directives and regulations and to bear no responsibility for how to execute them or for whatever the results will be.

Although the sea has always been a vital element of the EU, for some reason it never properly understood why. Fisheries policy was designed as an extension of agricultural policy and the main European jurisprudence that established the EU’s exclusive competence argued for it on the basis of a parallel between international transport by road and fisheries.

We learned - sometimes the hard way - that human activity often has devastating effects on the environment. For some reason - mainly because you can hardly see what is going on underneath the surface of the sea - humanity took a particularly long time to understand the capacity of the seas to sustain the aggressions we inflicted upon it.

It is high time to put our oceans and seas at the top of our agendas. Conservation of resources and environmental protection have to be the core concerns of EU policies that must aim at further develop our fisheries communities and make the best and most sustainable use of it by other human activities.

A European Coastguard, with sufficient resources and collective aims would be the best proof that Europe means a European policy for the seas, for real.

• Portuguese Socialist MEP Paulo Casaca is a member of the Parliament’s fisheries committee.

Two MEPs discuss maritime policy