In a press release dated Monday 8 January, the association Bloom, backed by around ten other NGOs for defence of the oceans (including Our Fish, Blue Marine Foundation, etc.), accuses the European Commission of having been influenced by Dutch fisheries lobbies and of having ignored the unfavourable opinion of its scientific committee when it proposed, in 2006, to authorise electric fishing by way of derogation.
The derogation in question is the most problematical point of the regulation on the “technical measures of common fisheries policy”, on which the European Parliament is to take a stance in Strasbourg on 16 January. Gabriel Mato (EPP, Spain), who is rapporteur for the European Parliament, had not obtained the negotiating mandate from the parliamentary fisheries committee to begin negotiations with the Council (see EUROPE 11909). The text is therefore put before the plenary. At this stage, the position held by the fisheries committee provides for status quo with regards electric fishing, allowing experimental use of electric trawl within the maximum limit of 5% of the beam trawler fleet for each country of the EU.
According to Bloom, which acquired the opinion dated November 2006 (i.e. one month before the Commission gave its go-ahead to the derogation for electric fishing), the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF) “never gave its endorsement to such derogations, but even explicitly advised the European Commission against granting approval”. The European regulation of December 2006 indicates that it is based on a scientific opinion in favour of granting derogations. The Commission therefore ignored “its own expert committee” and “went as far as to lie” in order to “meet the imperious demands of the Dutch lobby”. Those signing the communiqué sent a letter to the European Commission asking for all provisions relating to electric fishing to be immediately withdrawn from its proposal for a regulation on the technical measures currently under the scrutiny of Parliament and the Council.
MEP Yannick Jadot (Greens/EFA, France) has stressed that the European Commission should never have granted any derogations in 2006 to the ban on electric fishing. He said it is necessary to maintain a “total ban on this highly destructive practice”. (Original version in French)