The EU fishing fleet is estimated to be two to three times bigger than it should be to achieve a healthy balance with fish stocks, making it a key driver of overfishing. This gross overcapacity has been fuelled by decades of allowing taxpayers’ money to be spent on new and more powerful boats.
Against this backdrop, on 10 July the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee will consider a number of highly controversial amendments on its report on the new European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF), the public aid in support of the newly reformed Common Fisheries Policy. If amendments for measures to reintroduce subsidies for vessel construction were carried, they would drive a stake into the heart of the historic vote by the Parliament in February for ambitious reform of the CFP.
To reinstate these perverse subsidies would reverse the agreement in the last reform of the CFP ten years ago to phase out the use of public aid that contributes to a bloated EU fleet and overfishing, and would also make a mockery of the EU’s commitments made only a year ago at Rio+20 to eliminate such aid.
Every vote will count on 10 July and a new analysis ‘Emptying the Seas’ by Jack Thurston and Nils Mulvad of ‘FishSubsidy.Org’ provides compelling evidence why UK MEPs on the Fisheries Committee should vote against these amendments which represent a huge backward step in efforts to restore fish stocks, jobs and a healthy marine environment.
Thurston and Mulvad looked at the distribution of so-called ‘FIFG’ subsidies for vessel construction from 1994 until the end of this funding regime in 2006. They found that during that period, the EU spent EUR890 million to subsidise the construction of 5,860 new vessels. Spain was by far the biggest (74%) beneficiary of this hand-out, followed by Portugal (11%) and France (6%). But significantly not a single Euro went on financing the construction of UK-flagged vessels.
Indeed over the past two decades, and to their great credit, UK governments have consistently opposed subsidies for vessel construction on the grounds that such spend is not economically rational, that it drives unsustainable fishing, and represents poor use of taxpayer’s money compared to other measures to improve the long term livelihoods of fishermen and food security.
Any future EU aid for building new vessels will work against the interests of UK fishermen by giving their competitors an unfair advantage. Even ignoring the bigger picture of an EU fleet grossly out of kilter with fish stocks, there is therefore compelling reason for UK MEPs to oppose these dangerous amendments on July 10.