Storm looms over fishing fleets plan

Date: 06/06/1996

By Michael Mann

EU FISHERIES ministers are drawing up battle plans for another of their famous damage-limitation exercises.

In Luxembourg next week, they will unanimously condemn the European Commission's plans for swingeing cuts in the capacity of the EU's fishing fleet.

Ministers will also declare themselves unable to respect their commitment to agree the scope of the fourth “Multi-Annual Guidance Programme” (MAGPIV) by the end of the Italian presidency.

Instead, they will demand more details from Fisheries Commissioner Emma Bonino to justify her proposal to reduce the capacity of parts of the Union's bloated fishing fleet by as much as half by 2002.

None will argue with the fact that the EU's fishing fleet is too large for the quantity of fish left in its waters.

But, equally, none will dare bring down the wrath of domestic voters by going along with the Commission's approach, even if Bonino can claim it is firmly rooted in scientific evidence.

“There is lots of hard bargaining ahead. The proposed cuts go too far for everyone. We are all very concerned and nothing can be decided very quickly,” said one member state official.

“No one is happy to see reductions, but they all accept that we have to do something,” said another.

Spain, generally accepted as having the most over-sized fleet, will call at next Monday's (10 June) meeting for a link to be made between the meeting of existing targets and those set for the next MAGP. This is a clear reference to its success in reaching what were modest 1992-96 targets.

With the Commission yet to present a formal proposal, ministers will ask how capacity reductions have been calculated from data based on rates at which fish stocks are dwindling. “The hard part in all of this is to work out the relationship between mortality and fleet capacity,” commented an official.

Much work also remains to be done in differentiating between national fleets hunting different stocks using different fishing gear. The crucial division of the overall targets into 13 national MAGPs will only come after lengthy bilateral talks between the Commission and the member states.

Several governments will also be looking to the Commission to give member states more leeway to use 'effort reduction' measures - such as the 'days at sea' scheme - as a complement to the decommissioning of fishing boats. This will be of particular interest to the Dutch and the British, both of whom have been singled out as falling short of their targets under the current MAGP scheme.

British officials put the UK's failure to reach targets down to the fact that their planned days at sea scheme never got off the ground properly because of a lengthy legal challenge from disgruntled fishing unions. But Spanish officials stress that capacity reductions are the “simplest” and most transparent approach to the problem.

The attraction for national governments of imposing 'quotas' on the amount of time fishermen are allowed to stay at sea is that it reduces the political problem of taking vessels permanently out of service.

While admitting that over-capacity is a major factor behind dwindling stocks and annual reductions in Total Allowable Catches, Europeche - the umbrella organisation of the EU's fishing unions - stresses that there are a multitude of factors affecting the state of resources.

These include “climatic and environmental variations, interaction between different species, the effects of marine pollution, the mediocre way in which controls are carried out by the member states, and the existence of non-Community flag of convenience vessels”.

Europeche is calling for improved support schemes for fishermen who lose their livelihoods, and stresses the need to control imports of cheap fish which destabilise the EU market.

Fishermen's lobbies claim the “Lassen Report”, on which the Commission based its proposals, was based on the most threatened species in each category and was therefore not a true reflection of the real situation.

The Commission wants a general decision on the framework by the end of September before detailed negotiations begin on the national schemes. But Irish officials point out that, as yet, there is no ministerial meeting scheduled under their presidency until October.