22 May 2006 - Brussels, Belgium
- EU Fisheries Ministers, with the support of
the European Commission, are poised to spend hundreds
of millions of euros of taxpayers’ money on new
engines for Europe’s already over-sized fishing
fleet. Should this happen, the reformed Common
Fisheries Policy (CFP) will be demolished, warns
WWF, the global conservation organisation.
At the EU Fisheries Council
meeting in Luxembourg on 22 May, Ministers will
agree the European Fisheries Fund and determine
how nearly four billion euros of fishing subsidies
should be spent over the next seven years. The
compromise proposal to beef up Europe’s fishing
fleet, put forward by the EU Fisheries Commissioner
Joe Borg, is the latest in a series of backward
moves from the European Commission and would reverse
the 2002 Fisheries Council decision not to fund
increased fishing capacity.
“Providing fishermen with new
engines for their boats when there is no sustainable
fisheries management in place is at best alarmingly
short-sighted and at worst consigning the fishing
industry to failure”, wrote Jim Leape, WWF’s Director
General, in a letter to President of the European
Commission José Manuel Barroso.
“This is a complete U-turn on
the commitments of the 2002 Common Fisheries Policy
reform”, he added.
The European Commission wants
to grant subsidies for new engines in small-scale
fishing boats, claiming that these have a reduced
impact on the marine environment. But this is
not in fact the case, as fishing boats of less
than 12 metres in length make up more than 80
per cent of the European fleet and 34 per cent
of the engine power. Most of them operate off
the French, Spanish and Portuguese coasts, where
the state of stocks is among the worst in Europe.
In addition to this, it is widely
acknowledged that there are shortcomings in Member
States’ monitoring capacity, as approximately
80 per cent of new engines are on average 2.5
times more powerful than the legal limit engine
power.
WWF urges EU Fisheries Ministers
to block the European Fisheries Fund proposal
and not to jeopardise the objectives of the Common
Fisheries Policy by adopting measures that will
increase fishing capacity. Any decision on engine
replacement should be delayed until a future Council
meeting.
Notes to editors:
• The European Fisheries Fund is the instrument
that will guide the distribution of EU fishing
subsidies for the period 2007-2013. It replaces
the existing instrument known as the Financial
Instrument for Fisheries Guidance (FIFG).
• The Commission’s current compromise
position threatens to allow the replacement of
engines using Community Money on Aid for the replacement
of engines and aid for the renewal and modernisation
of the fleet for small scale coastal fishing.
This comes on top of State Aid allowed for modernisation
of engines. The European Commission is therefore
presenting a compromise position that contradicts
the objectives stated in the Common Fisheries
Policy reform.
• In the run up to the EU Fisheries
Council meeting, Ministers from Belgium, Denmark
and Finland have received more than 20,000 e-mails
from WWF campaigners asking them to use their
Council vote to block agreement of the European
Fisheries Fund (EFF) until later in the year.
• Last December the Fisheries
Council, based on the already weak proposal from
the European Commission, set Total Allowable Catches
and quotas for 2006 at a level 45% above scientific
advice.
