According to a report published on Wednesday 27 October by the NGOs Our Fish and Low Impact Fishers of Europe (LIFE), the EU and Member States should change the criteria for allocating fishing quotas in order to achieve a just transition towards a low-carbon, low-impact fishing fleet.
The report calls for the use of Article 17 of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) to allocate fishing quotas based on transparent and objective criteria of an environmental, social and economic nature.
It proposes criteria and processes that the European Commission and EU Member States could harness in order to achieve this goal, such as the reallocation of an increasing share of the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) over a period of eight years (with catch volumes favouring the small-scale low-impact fishing fleet) or the use of indicators (use of selective fishing gear, marine seabed impact, carbon cycle impact and history of fisheries and environmental compliance).
The systems used by Member States have led to the concentration of fishing opportunities in the hands of a few large players to the detriment of small, low-impact fishers, according to these NGOs.
Link to the report: https://bit.ly/2ZweXCN (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)