Brussels, 06/03/2009 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 5 March, the Advisory Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture (ACFA) published its initial reflections on the key issues to be taken into consideration by the Commission in the framework of its Green Paper (expected for the end of April) on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). ACFA is the only formal consultation body of stakeholders in the fisheries and aquaculture sector at European level (professional organisations, workers' organisations and other stakeholders affected).
In its paper, ACFA says it shares the Commission's position that there is no alternative to the existence of a common policy, since the matter consists in “managing a mobile international resource and common ecosystems”. According to ACFA, such a policy should continue to be essentially based on two current major principles of the CFP, namely equal access to Community waters and the regime of 6/12 miles (25 miles for Malta). Other major principles, in particular relative stability and the system of TACs and quotas, require a more in-depth reflection.
The ACFA document is divided into a number of sections, beginning with Governance. Taking into account the co-decision procedure that might come into force shortly, following ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, ACFA suggests launching the debate on the consequences of this change at the level of the stakeholders' participation in the decision-making process and on the nature itself of the legislation that will be adopted.
Conservation policy and fleet management. The resource conservation policy should be improved insofar as the resource is limited and therefore vulnerable. In this context, ACFA recommends better integration between the CFP and other Community policies such as the Integrated Maritime Policy, the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and other environmental policies. It subscribes to the idea of multiannual management plans. A decentralised approach is judged necessary so as to take into account the regional concerns.
A pre-requisite for a proper fleet management policy is to update the status and structure of the fleets in the different member states as the data available is obsolete. It is therefore necessary to carry out a specific diagnosis of the fishing capacity which would provide a precise response in terms of necessary adjustment of the capacity to the resources available, compared to the objectives fixed during the reform of 2002. Such an adjustment should be the responsibility of member states so as to reflect the regional specificities of each Basin.
In its present shape, the fleet policy fails in its central task of properly managing the capacity and generates difficulties in terms of safety of the crew members (tonnage problems) and energy consumption (fuel price). ACFA requests socio-economic and environmental impact assessments for all Community measures regarding fisheries, including the TAC and quotas policy.
Fishing rights and relative stability. ACFA wishes to launch a debate on the different options existing in quota transferability (exchange of quotas between enterprises from a single member state, between EU operators from different member states, or even with non-EU countries) and to examine the impact of these options on the principle of relative stability (for the time being, one of the pillars of the CFP) and on the other sections of the CFP (monitoring, programming of structural actions, markets, etc.). With regard to the transferability of fishing rights, a debate is needed, given the lack of consensus between the industrial fishing fleet and the small-scale fleet which fears that fishing rights will end up concentrated in the hands of a small number of large enterprises.
Discards. ACFA is in favour of reducing discards progressively to the minimum possible. This aim extends to the by-catch of non-target species such as sea birds, marine turtles and mammals, etc. ACFA supports a fishery by fishery approach to the problem (development of pilot projects).
Aquaculture. The revised CFP needs to offer solutions to the stagnation of European Union aquaculture development in recent years. (L.C./transl.rt)