Strasbourg, 18/04/2005 (Agence Europe) - As we announced (EUROPE 8925), on 14 April the European Parliament pruned back the measures proposed by the European Commission to reconstitute stocks of sole (western English Channel and Gulf of Gascony), southern hake and Norway lobster (in the Cantabrian Sea and the western Iberian Peninsula). The report by Rosa Miguélez Ramos (PES, Spain) on hake and Norway lobster was changed very little by the European Parliament (to give the Member States greater flexibility in the application of the fishing effort reduction system), whilst that of Philippe Morillon (ALDE, France, president of the committee on fisheries) was adopted as it stood.
During the debate, the European Commissioner for Fisheries, Joe Borg, said that the Commission and the EP have the common aim of rebuilding fish resources, but that “our approach is somewhat different. In this instance, we have some differences concerning the details”. On hake and Norway lobster, Mr Borg said that further to consultations with interested circles, he had agreed to the possibility of granting State aid to the fishermen in question, but only under the new European Fisheries Fund (2007-2013) and as long as the principle of equality of treatment for all fishermen in the same position was observed. He said that changes in total allowable catches (TACs) from one year to the next should be more or less 15% and therefore rejected EP amendments suggesting 10%. Given the abundance of young hake stock in this zone, Mr Borg rejected the EP's position in favour of excluding the Gulf of Cadiz from management measures for hake and Norway lobster, and merely recognised that this area called for different measures. Mr Borg disagreed with the EP's inclination to remove all references to zones closed to Norway lobster fishing, saying that he could only agree to changing the size and number of zones closed to fishing for Norway lobster. The EP proposed a stock reconstitution plan aiming to achieve a biomass of reproducers of 35,000 tonnes of hake for two consecutive years. The Commission accepted this figure. Mr Borg, on the other hand, opposed the other part of the amendment suggesting that stocks should be built back up “within ten years”. On preservation measures for sole, Mr Borg conceded that the biological state of stocks differed from one zone to the next, and thus proposed a “management plan” to be set up in the Gulf of Gascony (changes to TACs and control procedures), given the state of play with the stock, which seems to be less dramatic than at first feared. In the western English Channel, however, where the state of the stocks is much more worrying, Mr Borg feels that following the reconstitution plan (which is the same as the management plan but adds a limit on the number of fishing days allowed) is unavoidable. Indirectly, therefore, he rejected the EP's position suggesting a management plan in the English Channel as well as in the Gulf of Gascony, whilst agreeing to other amendments (changes in the TACs not exceeding 15% from one year to the next, more relaxed control measures).
Ms Miguélez Ramos pointed out that her report brought in “notable changes” to the Commission's proposal and warned that “in our view”, the duration of the plan “is not negotiable”. A ten-year plan (instead of the five-year plan proposed) would, she said, allow the balance in fishing and reconstitution activities for hake stocks to be preserved. The technical measures proposed (weighing fish, by-catch) were also changed, to bring in greater tolerance thresholds. According to the rapporteur, the Commission's proposals for Norway lobster would have “dramatic” consequences if implemented, as they would lead to a ban on trawling in all the waters of the Iberian Peninsula, even though Norway lobster accounts for only 1% of all catches in this zone. Mr Morillon pointed out that for the Gulf of Gascony at least, the latest scientific reports showed that the stock situations were not below their biological limitations. Instead of adopting the reconstitution plan, therefore, “it appeared preferable to adopt a management plan”, he said. He added that this “will obviously not leave fishermen free to resume intensive fishing efforts without let or hindrance, which would spell disaster for the future of the species”. The EP proposes that if the Commission was to state that a sole stock was running dangerously low, it should propose additional measures to guarantee the reconstitution of the stock, the rapporteur added.
“I am sorry to bring in a discordant note into this harmonious consensus”, said Marie-Hélène Aubert (Greens, France), who would have preferred the EP to support the Commission's proposal of a more voluntary basis, and regretted that given the constant diminishing of the resource, the Member States, “helped along by many of the MEPs”, continue “systematically” to want to “reduce the objectives to be met”. “We cannot allow the Commission's objectives to be systematically reduced, as the Commission is working on the basis of scientific data”, she concluded.