Brussels, 07/11/2011 (Agence Europe) - The UK House of Lords has come out in favour of aid to encourage fishermen to end the practice of discards, throwing unwanted fish back into the sea, and said that transferable fishing concessions should be obligatory and extended to all fishing vessels. Calling for more ambitious measures, it thus responded to the European Commission proposals on the reform of the common fisheries policy (CFP).
Lord Carter of Coles, who chairs the Lords EU agriculture, fisheries and environment sub-committee, said the CFP had “one of the most dismal reputations” of any policy. It had, he went on, failed to deliver sustainable fisheries and needed radical reform, including action to reduce discards.
He said that he welcomed the clear intention shown by the Commission in its proposals of July 2011 to reform the CFP fundamentally and supported the broad approach, “but a number of important aspects still need to be clarified - most importantly, how to devolve decision-making down to regional level, and truly involve fishermen in the decisions that affect them”.
In a letter to Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki, Lords EU committee chairman Lord Roper called on the EU to introduce a proper economic framework to support discard reduction. The success of the Project 50% in South-West England showed that fishermen were the ones best placed to decide how to avoid discards. The EU should put the right incentives in place to encourage them to do so, a House of Lords press release says.
The House of Lords committee also called on the EU to introduce a range of practical measures: - member states and fishermen themselves to take the technical decisions to put the CFP into practice, rather than this happening behind closed doors late at night in Brussels (a reference to the traditional Council of Ministers end-of-year marathons on fisheries quota setting); - consistent planning at regional, national and EU levels to meet Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) by 2015, which is the maximum level of fishing that can take place without harming the long term levels of fish stocks; - the introduction of Transferable Fishing Concessions (TFCs) to be made compulsory so that even the smallest vessels have access to the scheme: the ultimate aim of bringing EU fleet capacity into line with fishing opportunities would be undermined if TFCs were only available to large vessels; - consistent methodology for collecting data on EU fish stocks so that data are reliable; - compulsory national action plans to encourage aquaculture, given its increasing importance as a source of food when the world's population has just reached 7 billion; - an EU labelling system which gives consumers the information they need to make informed choices about which fish products to buy; - and proper recognition of the Community Fisheries Control Agency's control and enforcement role.
The House of Lords also wants non-EU countries which receive EU funding through fisheries agreements to respect human rights and to account for how they spend all the money received from the EU. (LC/transl.rt)