Fact File: Modern tools for effective control

Measures put in place to protect resources are often circumvented or breached more or less seriously. Such infringements of common rules have many serious consequences. They prevent the policies implemented to ensure the sustainability of fishing activities from achieving their aims. If everyone played strictly by all such rules, problems of overfishing and sustainability of resources would be on their way to a solution in European waters.

For honest fishermen, the behaviour of those who break the law constitutes unfair competition and yet another obstacle to the survival of their business. This explains why there is wide recognition today of the need to develop and implement a culture of compliance.

It is a priority for the European Commission. The majority of fishermen themselves are aware that their long-term earnings depend on maintaining a reasonable level of catches. However, the sector’s first demand is that fisheries rules have to be applied with the same diligence across the European Union, that the same constraints are applied fairly to all operators.

To achieve these objectives of transparency, fairness and effectiveness in its policies, the European Commission has carried out a reform of its control system culminating with the adoption of implementing measures for the new fisheries control regulation. Rather than focusing controls on fishing activity, its philosophy is to concentrate on fisheries products, at every link in the supply chain. A new global and integrated risk analysis strategy based on systematic and automatic checks of all data throughout the chain, including the sale of catches, will make it easier to identify inconsistencies and suspicious behaviour quickly. A traceability system will therefore form an integral part of the new control system. In the future, the operator in possession of the fishery products, even temporarily, will have to be able to provide documentation proving where they come from and that they were caught legally. To put the new system in place without delay, European financial support is available for the necessary investments.

The control scheme and dissuasive penalties are essential but will not suffice on their own to guarantee general application of the measures. The only way to ensure that resource protection measures are always complied with in practice is to make fishermen aware that these measures are taken in their own long-term interest and that they are the only way to secure a sustainable income, now and in the future.