Brussels, 17/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - The chair of the European Parliament (EP) fisheries committee, Gabriel Mato Adrover (EPP, Spain), has written to Maria Damanaki, the European commissioner for fisheries, to ask her to carry out an additional impact study on the controversial proposal aiming to phase out over a two-year period the fishing gears which are most harmful to the deep-sea ecosystem, namely bottom trawls and bottom gill nets. This could have the effect of postponing the examination of the dossier until 2014 at the earliest, given the forthcoming European elections (at the end of May) and the new European Commission due to take up its duties in November 2014.
MEPs, including representatives of France, Spain and Ireland in the EP committee on fisheries, believe that a ban on trawling of this kind would be going too far, as deep-sea fishing is already highly regulated and stocks of the species in question (grenadier, blue ling, scabbardfish, etc) are recovering (see EUROPE 10812).
The chair of the EP fisheries committee is calling on Damanaki to carry out a further impact study as new data have been published since the Commission's proposal was adopted in July 2012. The commissioner is asked to take account of the data of the Deepfishman project and those on the socio-economic dimension of deep-sea fishing. The Commission is requested to provide information on the proposal's impact on businesses. Here, the EP has found the weak spot in the proposal, and it would very much suit France and Spain, who were opposed to the initial proposal, for the debate to be postponed. (LC/transl.fl)