Wednesday, 13th July 2011
“Disappointing” and “Modest” CFP reform condemned by senior Fisheries Committee MEP
The reform package for the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) unveiled today by Fisheries Commissioner Damanaki has been condemned as “modest” and “disappointing” by Scottish Conservative MEP and Senior Vice President of the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee, Struan Stevenson.
Following this afternoon’s announcement, Mr Stevenson also called on fellow MEPs to use new powers to press for a more comprehensive reform package.
Commenting from Brussels, Mr Stevenson said:
“After months of waiting, great excitement and anticipation of a radical package of reform for the CFP, these proposals have turned out to be a disappointment. They are far from the radical change needed. At best they can be described as modest.
“It looks like the bureaucrats have scored a victory, retaining the central role of Brussels in all fisheries decisions, rather than devolving day-to-day management responsibility to the Member States, as most had wanted. Although de-centralisation was the key recommendation arising from the extensive debate in the European Parliament on the Green Paper on CFP Reform last year, there is little reference to it in Ms Damanaki’s new package. Now it seems that Member States will only be allowed to decide on mesh sizes and discards policy, rather than on the wider day-to-day management policies that have bedevilled the sector.
“If anything, there even seems to be a drift towards even more centralised control. These proposals will effectively take existing powers away from the Parliament and the Council of Ministers and pass them to the Commission. And the concept of providing a basket of management options from which Member States could choose, seems to have fallen foul of the bureaucrats too, which is disappointing.”
Mr Stevenson added:
“All of this reinforces my view that the way forward for the European Parliament is very clear. We have full legislative power now, in the wake of the Lisbon Treaty, and we must use our new-found muscle to push through a comprehensive reform. Our fishing communities and the future of European fish stocks deserve nothing less.
“This means that we must restore a significant level of de-centralisation and regionalisation into the reform package. Control must be wrested away from the micro-managers in Brussels. Their dead-hand over the past three decades has devastated EU fish stocks and destroyed tens of thousands of jobs in the industry.
“We must also ensure that there is no attempt to enforce a one-size fits all approach to banning discards and pursuing a policy of maximum sustainable yields (MSY). While MSY is a laudable policy worthy of support, it is unworkable in a mixed fishery. Similarly, an outright ban on discards would in some fisheries, such as nephrops, lead to greater mortality, because fishermen would be forced to land prawns that they used to throw back, alive, into the sea. We must not lose sight of these anomalies and I am glad that this has been recognised by the Commission in their reform package, which seeks to exempt from a discards ban any species that have a high survival rate when returned to the sea.”
Mr Stevenson concluded:
“We are embarking on 18 months of intensive work on this reform package and the parliament will insist on a radically reformed policy that embraces regionalisation, an ecosystem approach based on multi-annual plans, an effective policy for dealing with discards, better science, a rights-based management system that does not allow international trading of rights, support for aquaculture and the criminalisation of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing.
“Some of these objectives are covered by the new Commission proposals, others are not or are inadequate. But I can see that our main fight is going to be with the bureaucrats. Wresting meaningful control away from the Brussels desk-jockeys and devolving it to the stakeholders is our primary objective. We will accept nothing less."
ENDS
Notes to editors:
1. Struan Stevenson is a Conservative Euro MP for Scotland and Senior Vice President of the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee.
2. For more information, please contact Peter Smyth on peter@indigopr.com; (0044) 131 554 1146 or (0044) 7766 166 637.
