Brussels, 14/01/2002 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday, the European Parliament will discuss the report by Ian Stewart Hudghton (Greens/EFA, UK) on restoring cod and hake stocks. With the aim of preventing the disappearance of 50% of the ships and a correspondingly huge number of fishing jobs, the Scottish rapporteur wants the European Commission (which outlined its policies in a Communication published in June 2001) to ease up on some of the technical measures it is planning regarding increasing the mesh of nets to allow young cod and hake to escape. Mr Hudghton also wants the Commission to make the long-term stock restoration plans more flexible by extending their duration to at least seven years, rather than the five years proposed by the Commission, in order to scale back the drastic measures foreseen for the first years of the plan.
The rapporteur calls on the Commission to only provisionally close fishing zones after an agreement has been signed with stakeholders on the aims and details of how the emergency measures are to be implemented. He stressed that industrial fishing (that leads to the catch of young of threatened species) has to be phased out if one is to preserve the long-term future of fish species used for food. He called on the Commission to carry out research into the decline of plankton species, particularly calamus finmarchicus which is what cod live on and is therefore a key part of the food chain.