No ban on trawling and bottom fishing will be imposed on Member States in marine protected areas by the European Union, the French Secretary of State for the Sea, Hervé Berville, announced on Sunday 2 April.
The European Commissioner for Fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius, “confirmed that he would not impose a ban on bottom gears in marine protected areas either in 2024 or in 2030”, said Mr Berville at the end of a meeting in Brussels with the Commissioner, in the company of French fishermen worried about the future of their industry in the face of such a measure.
The action plan on marine ecosystems presented in February by the Commission “only proposes guidelines to the Member States”, the Commissioner was quoted by the French minister as saying. The minister added that “France will therefore not be forced to take prohibition measures”, (see EUROPE 13142/19).
Clear up misunderstandings. The meeting aimed to “clear up any misunderstanding”, a Commission spokesperson said on Monday 3 April. “It is not a binding target or a legislative text that we are proposing, it is an invitation to dialogue between stakeholders in order to find solutions to deal with the effects of bottom fishing”, the spokesperson said.
The fishermen and the French government claimed that a ban on bottom trawling in these areas by 2030 would have put the industry at risk.
The measure has provoked an outcry from fishermen in France, but also in Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Denmark (see EUROPE 13145/9).
The European Bottom Fisheries Alliance (EBFA) estimated that the ban would have put 7,000 vessels at risk, representing “25% of the (fishing) volumes landed and 38% of the total revenues of the European fleet”. In France, according to the National Fisheries Committee, such a measure would have caused the disappearance of almost a third of the fleet. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)