By Euan Dunn, Principal Marine Advisor
On Monday and Tuesday next week, the Council of Fisheries Ministers are meeting in Brussels, under the Irish Presidency and Irish Fisheries Minister Simon Coveney.
They will have a huge say in deciding the fate of European fisheries for the next ten years and beyond. They will be making crucial decisions about the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy, a once-in-decade opportunity to put right a highly discredited, broken system of managing what is a public good – our fish stocks and the marine environment that harbours them.
Last reviewed in 2002, this time the CFP reform has been something of a breach birth. It was meant to come into force on the 1st of January 2012 but negotiations have been tortuous, not least because this time around it’s not just the Council, but also the European Parliament that have to reach collective agreement on the measures to be taken. This has resulted in a two year delay, with a target date for implementation now being January 2014.
And the Parliament has set the bar high for the Council of Ministers by voting overwhelmingly in February for a radical reform that could end decades of overfishing and put us on track to recover fish stocks by 2020. The RSPB and the other NGOs have given a huge tip of the hat to the Parliament for their bold and unprecedented level of ambition.
The European Parliament’s vote next week therefore throws down the gauntlet to the weaker Council position. However, a number of Member States, including France, Spain, Poland, Lithuania, Greece and Romania, are resisting efforts to find common ground with the Parliament on key issues such as fleet management and discards. In fact the only major issue on which the Council is currently showing its willingness to compromise with the Parliament is on recovering stock levels to the so-called ‘maximum sustainable yield’.
It’s vital that the Irish Presidency does not give in to the Council detractors from far-reaching reform. Rather the Presidency must support those countries which are championing a really positive sea change in the CFP. To do otherwise is to condemn fish stocks to the status of a guttering candle and those communities dependent on them to becoming a sunset industry. To do otherwise is also a recipe for fishing continuing to inflict unacceptable collateral damage on the wider marine environment, not least the needless toll of seabirds killed in fishing gears.
Commendably, the UK’s Richard Benyon is in the vanguard for positive reform – and he deserves our support to stick to his position.
In the last ditch Council saloon, the RSPB is therefore urging Richard Benyon and his fellow Ministers to strike a compromise that includes a timeline for stock recovery, and targeted measures to eliminate overfishing and promote low-impact fishing. We urge them to set measures that will minimize discards and other bycatch, stops fleets growing ever more powerful, and put a halt once and for all to the damaging subsidies to which the fishing industry has become addicted.
Please get behind our Minister and show your support for the lead he has been taking among the more enlightened fishing nations. You can show your support for Richard Benyon by tweeting for a strong CFP deal @RICHARDBENYONMP #CFPREFORM
Trawler: Bern Altman, www.sxc.hu