Reform essential to save fish stocks, warns nature group

Date: 31/01/02

By David Cronin

FAILURE to radically reform the EU's common fisheries policy (CFP) this year could have disastrous consequences for fish stocks, according to environment campaign group The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

It warns that the decision by EU leaders at the Göteborg summit last June to review the policy - prompted by 'sheer necessity and urgency' - could be severely hindered by short-term 'political realities'.

In a new paper, WWF director general Dr Claude Martin argues the CFP's overhaul should be based on:

• a 40 reduction in the capacity of the EU fisheries fleet;
• changes to fishing agreements between the Union and developing countries in order to protect 'social and economic stability' in the latter;

The WWF's 40 fleet reduction target is based on a decade-old warning by scientific experts tasked by the European Commission to examine the extent of over-fishing. That target has been whittled down to a 5 reduction by the Council of Ministers.

Cod is mentioned as 'perhaps the most severely struck species' in the WWF report.

Over-fishing, particularly in the North Sea, off Scotland's West Coast and in the Irish Sea, has resulted in EU stocks of adult cod falling by 73 between 1994 and 1999.

In the same period, the EU spent about €330 million on scrapping vessels, the study adds.

But that figure was €131 million less than the subsidies which were allocated to new vessels and to the modernisation of the existing fleet in those years.

The WWF also predicts that the new five-year fisheries deal signed between the Union and Mauritania last year could ruin the country's fishing sector. Although the octopus catch in Mauritania has been cut by one-third in recent years, the amount of European boats pursuing the species is set to rise by 30.

Failure to radically reform the EU's common fisheries policy in 2002 could have disastrous consequences for fish stocks, according to environment campaign group the World Wide Fund for Nature.