Brussels, 09/07/2012 (Agence Europe) - Fleet capacity remains one of the main obstacles to achieving sustainable fisheries and is one of the issues that the Commission is seeking to address with the proposed reform of the common fisheries policy, according to a report on member states' efforts during 2010 to achieve a sustainable balance between fishing capacity and fishing opportunities published on Monday 9 July. This report backs the Commission proposal of introducing individual transferable quotas, or “concessions”, to reduce the size of the fishing fleet.
According to the fleet register, on 31 December 2010, the EU fishing fleet comprised 78,831 vessels, with a total fishing capacity of 1,674,320 GT and 6,058,017 kW. The number of vessels fell by 0.96% in 2010. The data from 2010 indicates that capacity reductions during 2010 (3.6 % in tonnage and 2% in power) are in line with those of previous years although they seem to indicate a slight acceleration of the capacity adjustment in terms to tonnage.
The amount of capacity decommissioned with public aid in 2010 was lower than in 2009 and was concentrated in a few member states. Spain, Italy and France accounted for approximately 80% of the total tonnage. This tonnage decommissioned with public aid represented approximately 50% of the net tonnage reduction during the year. A weakness in the management system, mentioned in the Danish report, is the difficulty of verifying whether the engine power is correctly stated, the Commission says, adding that this is not a specific Danish problem, but concerns other member states as well.
Of the 22 member states affected, the Commission says that 15 have prepared a general notice on the balance between fishing capacity and fishing opportunities. The seven which have failed to produce such a notice are Spain, Poland, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The United Kingdom has not yet submitted a report on its fleet.
Despite using more closely defined indicators, current efforts to limit fishing capacity have done little to deal with the problem of overcapacity, the Commission says. “At the current rate of capacity reductions, which are at least partly compensated by technological progress, it will be difficult to eliminate overcapacity in the short term if no changes are made to the current policy”, the report states. These observations put into question the need and effectiveness of publicly financed capacity reductions. The Court of Auditors also concluded in its report that current measures have failed and that either a new approach to tackling the problem needs to be adopted and, or existing measures have to be better enforced. (LC/transl.rt)