On the initiative of the organisation Bloom, the association of small European fisheries (Low-Impact Fishers of Europe) and 27 French, Belgian, Dutch and British fisheries filed an action for failure to act against the European Commission on 14 March before the Court of Justice of the EU for “unlawful failure to act and maladministration” with regard to electrofishing.
“The Commission has, in effect, refused to investigate the complaint filed by fishermen in the spring of 2021 to obtain the reimbursement of illegal subsidies allocated to electric fishing”, Bloom argues in a statement.
The fishermen’s complaint relates to events prior to the EU’s ban on electrofishing, effective from 1 July 2021 (see EUROPE 12685/31).
The merits of the original complaint were clear, however, according to Bloom: the Netherlands had equipped five times more vessels for electrofishing than the permitted limit (84 versus 15), while financial support for European fleets is conditional on compliance with the rules of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
By violating the EU’s regulatory framework, the EU subsidies for electrofishing were therefore “illegal”, according to the plaintiffs.
In mid-April 2021, the Court of Justice of the EU rejected the Netherlands’ appeal against the ban on fishing with electrical pulse current (see EUROPE 12685/31). (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)