Tuesday, 18th May 2010
Scottish fishermen must be compensated for EC blunder
The European Commission has finally thrown its hands up to a blunder that saw hard-pressed Scottish fishermen lose valuable days at sea.
Scottish Conservative MEP Struan Stevenson said the welcome admission by new Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki that the EC had miscalculated cod quotas for the West of Scotland in 2007 now needed to be backed with compensation for the affected trawlermen.
The error had seen bungling EC mandarins mistakenly switch data between two columns of a table which calculated fishing quotas that year. But instead of admitting guilt when Scots fishing groups protested to the European Ombudsman, the Commission dug its heels in.
Mr Stevenson, who is Senior Vice President of the European Parliament Fisheries Committee, said:
“West of Scotland fishermen have been up in arms about this blunder for the past three years. The Commission’s error slashed their days at sea allocation for catching cod from 280 to 252 days.
“This was at the time when fuel prices were going sky high and fishermen everywhere were struggling to survive. Losing 28 days of an already severely restricted allocation of days at sea was catastrophic for many cod fishermen on the West coast.
“Back in February, the Commission insisted that the EU Ombudsman was wrong in accusing them of having mistakenly switched data between two columns of a table that served as a basis for fishing quotas that year.
“Now Mrs Damanaki has acknowledged that in fact the Ombudsman was correct and the Commission was wrong. This is a breakthrough. The Fisheries Commissioner has once again demonstrated that she is a new broom keen to sweep away past mistakes by the Commission.
“Now that Mrs Damanaki has had the good grace to acknowledge the Commission’s mistake, I trust that immediate action will be taken to compensate the fishermen for the losses they incurred. I will be writing to Commissioner Damanaki to make this point.”
The European Ombudsman, Nikiforos Diamandouros, investigated the complaint in 2008. He concluded that the Commission had indeed made an administrative mistake. The Ombudsman urged the Commission to correct its error, pointing out that the mistake might have knock-on effects for subsequent years. But in its replies to the Ombudsman's findings, the Commission adopted the view that no mistake had been made.
To read the full decision, please visit:
http://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/cases/decision.faces/en/4548/html.bookmark
