Brussels, 27/07/2004 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has published the second edition of the Common Fisheries Policy Scoreboard. It shows that while there has been some progress in Member States' transmission of data for 2003, substantial improvements are required to conserve fish stocks. Three-quarters of the pending infringement procedures relate to cases of overfishing. Since last year's Scoreboard EUROPE 18 June 2003), the Commission has initiated four new infringement procedures: one each against Spain and the UK for serious failings in their enforcement obligations and against France and Spain for unsatisfactory control of the use of certain fishing gears.
- Preventing overfishing: Member States must keep a close eye on the catches of their vessels so that fishing can be stopped on time to respect the quotas set by the Council of Fisheries Ministers on the basis of scientific advice. While there has been some improvement compared to last year, Denmark was the only Member State which complied fully with the rules by submitting all the required catch reports on time.
- The number of quotas that were overshot decreased from 3% in 2002 to 2% in 2003. The extent of overfishing of the quota concerned varies substantially from less than 1% to 76% as do the related quantities. The Member States most concerned are Belgium, Spain and, for the third year, the Netherlands.
- Fleet management: progress was made regarding information that has to be communciation to the Community fleet register. Registration of boats is still causing problems in Ireland and certain data is incomplete or wrong in Portugal, Italy and the United Kingdom. Worse than this, Portugal has in fact provided only 2% of the information required. In Italy this figure is more but is below 17%.
- Monitoring and control: In July 1999, the Council adopted a list of types of conduct which seriously infringe CFP rules. Member States must report annually on the action taken following the detection of serious breaches to the rules. The Commission notes that shortcomings in the reports received make comparison difficult. From the data received, it appears that the number of serious infringements went down in 2002 with 6,756 cases from 8,139 cases in 2001. As in last year's edition, half of these relate to illegal fishing either without authorisation or in prohibited areas.
- Infringement procedures: Three-quarters (61) of the infringements procedures currently pending against Member States (81) relate to fishing beyond allocated quotas. All Member States, except for Greece and Italy - only subject to one quota - are concerned: Denmark (10), Spain (9), Belgium, France and the UK (7), Sweden (6), Ireland and Portugal (5), Germany and Finland (2) and the Netherlands (1). Eight more relate to failure to notify catch data. Four new infringement procedures have been launched. Two were initiated against Spain and the UK for serious failings in their enforcement obligations, while the other two concern France and Spain for unsatisfactory monitoring of technical measures (use of driftnets).
The scoreboard is available on the internet at the following address: (http: //europa.eu.int/comm/fisheries/scoreboard/index_en.htm).
