Brussels, 24/03/2003 (Agence Europe) - In the communication by Commissioner Franz Fischler, which was adopted on Monday, the European Commission is proposing the creation of a "Community Fisheries Control Agency" (CFCA), which would be responsible for co-ordinating inspection and surveillance activities within the EU. A feasibility study, to be carried out in collaboration with the Member States, will look at all aspects relating to the creation of the CFCA, including its tasks, relations with the Member States and the Commission, and the resources needed. Once the results of this study are available, the Commission will present a legislative proposal, at the end of this year or early in 2004. This agency will not be set up until after the implementation of a two-year Plan of Action (from 2003 - 2005), allowing national control strategies to be integrated into a coherent Community strategy.
The Commission is proposing that the CFCA be responsible for the joint deployment of pooled national means of inspection and surveillance, in line with a European strategy, to be defined by the Plan of Action. Multi-national inspection teams will be set up to ensure that rules were being enforced equally. The Agency would, in particular, assume responsibility for the organisation of inspection and surveillance of licences, vessel characteristics, and fishing activities in EU territory and waters as well as in international and third-country waters. The CFCA would also co-ordinate inspections of landings. The Commission believes that such an Agency would improve the cost-efficiency ratio of inspection and enforcement activities.
Community strategy for inspection and surveillance
Some of the measures in the proposed action plan aim to define a coherent strategy in order to raise the efficiency of inspection and surveillance activities in the Member States:
- step up national controls for the most threatened stocks (cod and hake): this approach would then be gradually rolled out to other fisheries or stocks, such as highly migratory species in the Mediterranean. Landings by vessels operating illegally must also be targeted as a matter of priority.
- adopt specific monitoring programmes: the Commission believes that these programmes should concentrate on inspection and monitoring at sea, inspection of landings (including first sales of quantities landed), transport and marketing. The programmes will build on previous experience of trans-national co-operation among national monitoring and enforcement authorities. The Commission points out that the monitoring authorities of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Norway agreed to undertake joint efforts during the temporary closure of cod fishing in a large area of the North Sea. The Commission proposes regular assessments of the efficiency of the programmes, and to publish the results of the inspection and surveillance activities to ensure a high level of transparency. The Commission believes that in the Baltic Sea, for example, implementation of conservation measures would be much more effective in the same frequency of inspection in each of the landing ports could be guaranteed.
- reinforce co-operation to ensure efficiency of controls: the Commission explains that experience in voluntary co-operation between control and enforcement services of different Member States has highlighted a number of practical problems related to access to information, operational co-operation between surveillance vessels and aircraft from the different countries, and the follow-up of irregularities and infringements. The Plan of Action provides for measures to facilitate co-operation at operations level. The Commission will also define applications methods, such as notification procedures and co-ordination practices to be applied when national means of inspection and surveillance of a Member State are used in waters coming under the jurisdiction of other Member States.
The Commission explains that over half of Northern hake are taken in Irish waters, whilst more than 50% is landed in Spain. Inspection of these fishing activities is carried out by Irish surveillance vessels, whereas the landings in Spain are inspected by Spanish inspectors. UK, French and Spanish surveillance vessels cannot, as yet, patrol Irish waters, and Irish, French and UK inspectors cannot participate in inspections in Spain. The Commission feels this situation is untenable.
Actions to improve the uniformity of inspection and surveillance activities at European level are also planned, particularly drawing up a code of conduct of inspections specifying the inspectors' tasks and the procedures to be followed.