On Monday 2 May the European Parliament debated fishing procedures in marine protected areas, before a vote on the subject the following day, as part of the report by Isabel Carvalhais (S&D, Portugal) on a sustainable blue economy.
This is a simple own-initiative report, but the European Parliament’s position on the part concerning marine protected areas (see EUROPE 12939/5) is highly anticipated.
The draft report, which took up the paragraph proposed by the Greens/EFA group, calls on the EU to “ban the use of bottom trawling in all marine protected areas”.
The EPP group has requested a separate vote on this paragraph in plenary: a majority of members can therefore reject this paragraph. An amendment suggested in particular by the Renew Europe group aims to find a compromise by asking the EU “to prohibit the use of detrimental techniques in its strictly protected marine areas, following the best available scientific advice”. The mention of bottom trawling, a technique decried by NGOs, would thus be avoided so as not to point the finger at one fishing technique.
Another amendment by MEPs from several groups (Greens/EFA, Renew Europe, The Left, S&D) calls on the EU to urgently address the adverse effects on the climate, seabed integrity, fish populations and sensitive species of fishing gear such as bottom-contacting gear, drift nets, demersal seines or fish aggregating devices, “by limiting their use”.
The Greens/EFA group tabled an amendment calling on the EU to launch and fund scientific research programmes to map carbon-rich marine habitats in the EU as a basis for defining these sites as strictly protected marine areas with the aim of preserving and restoring marine carbon sinks and ecosystems (including the seabed), in order to protect “them from human activities that could disturb and release carbon into the water column, such as bottom-contacting fishing operations”.
Finally, another amendment tabled by several groups suggests banning environmentally damaging industrial extraction activities, such as mining and fossil fuel extraction in marine protected areas.
The European Parliament vote “on a crucial text for the climate, the protection of biodiversity and marine habitats will be closely watched by citizens and NGOs”, points out the association Bloom, which believes that bottom trawling “consumes large quantities of fuel, destroys marine ecosystems, flattens habitats and captures all marine life indiscriminately”. The NGO Oceana is also lobbying MEPs to support an end to bottom trawling in marine protected areas. The profession is concerned. The European Bottom Fishing Alliance (EBFA), which represents over 20,000 fishermen and 7,000 vessels, strongly condemns the Parliament initiatives aiming to ban bottom trawling in all marine protected areas. The consequences of this vote could prove “devastating for European citizens and the continent’s food security and sovereignty. In fact, bottom-trawling vessels play a fundamental role as food suppliers, bringing ashore more than one million tons of healthy and sustainable seafood annually, which represents around 25% of total EU landings in weight and value”. “Prohibiting this sustainable food supply would only result in intensifying our imports of fish from foreign countries where we have no control whatsoever on its sustainability”, says the EBFA (see EUROPE 12919/13). (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)