Memorandum by The Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds
INTRODUCTION
1. The RSPB advocates fisheries management
which maintains the balance between fishing effort and living
marine resources, thus ensuring the long-term sustainability of
fish stocks and their supporting ecosystems. As UK partner of
BirdLife International, the RSPB plays a key role in delivering
science-based advocacy to the fishing industry and its managers
in Europe and beyond.
2. The Common Fisheries Policy was reviewed
in 2002, and is due for its next review in 2012. Sometimes there
is a mid-term review which, in this cycle, would naturally have
fallen in 2007, but so far there has been no such openly public
review this year. The CFP review in 2002, while not a radical
overhaul, achieved some significant changes in direction, notably:
— a halt to public aid for building
and modernising fishing vessels;
— commitment to develop an ecosystem-based
approach to fisheries management; and
— first steps towards regionalising
the CFP by creating Regional Advisory Councils.
3. Despite the 2002 review, while it can
be argued that the reforms need time to work, the CFP is manifestly
failing to deliver sustainable fisheries across a wide range of
indicators.
4. Fish stocks are still highly degraded:
About four-fifths of stocks remain `outside safe biological
limits'. The number of fish stocks at risk in Community Waters
appears to be neither decreasing nor increasing (DG Fisheries
2007).
5. Excessive discarding: Total discards
in the North Sea are estimated at 500,000 to 880,000 tonnes annually,
representing about half the weight of fish actually landed. A
major cause is insufficient emphasis on preventing the capture
of undersized fish and non-target species in the first place.
The RSPB supports the introduction of a discard ban in trial fisheries.
6. Excess capacity: While some progress
has been made to reduce excess capacity across Community fleets
(notably in the Scottish whitefish fleet), the rate is too slow
and reductions are nullified by increases in the technical efficiency
of fishing.
7. Recovery plans and long-term management
plans: These need to be extended, strengthened and speeded
up.
8. Illegal fishing: Too much is still
going on, undermining stocks and the credibility of management.
The Commission is developing strong proposals for action, which
we support.
9. Ecosystem Approach: The EC still
has no overall strategy for implementing this, despite progress
in some areas. The strength of the Commission's forthcoming Communication
on implementation of the ecosystem approach will be an acid test.
10. Governance: The top-down governance
of the CFP increasingly fails to deliver sustainable fisheries.
Regionalisation of the CFP, begun with the inauguration of Regional
Advisory Councils (RACs), needs to be developed further. The decision-making
role of the Council, so often an obstacle to sustainable fisheries,
should be changed and options for new institutional structures
and devolution of powers explored in a wide-ranging public debate.
CONSERVATION/MANAGEMENT
Methods of ensuring conservation and sustainability
1. According to the Commission (COM(2007)295),[1]
long-term management arrangements for northern hake, Biscay sole,
North Sea haddock, mackerel and saithe have benefited stocks,
and improved fishing opportunities for the sector. Northern hake
appears to have recovered and returned within safe biological
limits. However, the recovery plan for cod has not resulted in
improvement at the rate anticipated and the stock remains well
below safe biological limits.
2. Looking at all Community stocks in the
round, however, there has been no change since the 2002 reforms.
In the Commission's analysis of assessments by the International
Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), the number of stocks
at risk appears to be neither decreasing nor increasing, with
around four-fifths (35 out of 43 = 81%) remaining outside safe
biological limits. These appalling figures would be even worse
if they included deepwater fisheries which are not formally assessed
although ICES considers that most are fished beyond safe biological
limits.
3. Only three stocks subject to Total Allowable
Catches (TACs), namely North Sea haddock, North Sea saithe and
megrims in the Bay of Biscay, are being exploited at their Maximum
Sustainable Yield (MSY) as aspired to by the UN World Summit on
Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, 2002.
4. On the basis of such statistics, Sissenwine
and Symes (2007)[2]
conclude that the "fisheries of the CFP suffer a much
higher rate overfishing than occurs on average worldwide and in
a comparable developed country". Analysis of global fisheries
performance by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
supports this bleak conclusion, with the North-East Atlantic (including
the Mediterranean and Black Seas) identified as "the areas
with stocks having the greatest need for recovery."
5. This reinforces the need for long-term
management plans, which are progressively being introduced. Integral
to these is the definition of a target rate of fishing mortality,
and a means to reach that target incrementally, rather than seeking
to manage stock biomass levels. Such built-in harvesting rules
should also militate against political manipulation of catch limits
in the Fisheries Council.
6. The increasing role of environmental
pressures on certain fish stocks, over which man has little short-term
control, underlines further the need for a precautionary approach
and a tight rein on fishing mortality. Eg the North Sea herring
recovery plan, established in 1997, was initially successful but—for
reasons not fully understood but suspected to be related to sea
warming—all the year classes since 2001 are among the weakest
since the late 1970s. This culminated in a 41% reduction on the
2008 catch limit at the December 2007 Fisheries Council. So even
a recovery plan does not guarantee good returns; however, it does
safeguard against even worse performance.
7. Art 2 of Council Regulation 2371/2002
mandated the progressive development of an ecosystem-based approach
to fisheries management. To date, however, the EU's response to
this has been too piecemeal, reactive and does not amount to a
coherent strategy. This failure has allowed damage to marine ecosystems
to go unchecked. The Commission will produce a Communication this
year on implementing an ecosystem-based approach which may go
some way towards remedying this. However, the Communication should
be scrutinised to determine the extent to which it offers just
further guidance, as distinct from a much-needed strategic plan
for implementation.
8. The RSPB's view is that there is a need
to implement the ecosystem approach on a regional seas basis (ie
for the North Sea, Irish Sea, Baltic etc) by developing Fisheries
Ecosystem Plans (FEPs) for each. The methodology for this is well
understood, and would, in the RSPB's view, embed an ecosystem
approach in the management of fisheries in UK and other Community
waters. Defra is launching a pilot to trial an ecosystem-based
approach to SW England fisheries—this could help to serve
as a model for developing FEPs elsewhere.
9. In this context, however, DG Fisheries
has lamentably little capacity for addressing the environmental
dimension of the CFP. This calls for two things: (a) closer institutional
liaison between DG Fish and DG Environment; (b) the need for MEPs
to lobby in the European Parliament for greater resources to build
environmental capacity in DG Fish.
Management tools are available to fisheries managers
It is important to appreciate at the outset
that, inasmuch as different tools suit different fisheries, it
is not possible to address these tools in a prescriptive "one-size-fits-all"
basis.
Total Allowable Catches (TACs)
10. These serve pelagic fisheries rather
well but have proved to be a blunt instrument for managing mixed
whitefish stocks of the sort found in the North Sea. Apart from
the fact that Ministers routinely set TACs at levels higher than
scientific advice, TACs tend to generate misreporting and discarding.
TACs, since they are effectively Total Allowable Landings,
suffer in these ways largely because they represent control by
output rather than input. In this respect, there
is merit in shifting the onus more towards controlling effort
(see below) than catches/landings.
11. For the most degraded stocks, like cod,
we argue for allocating only a `bycatch quota' whereby there is
no directed fishery for the species, and all cod taken would be
as a component of an associated fishery (eg Nephrops) with the
bycatch quota used to limit the mortality of the bycatch species
(cod). There would then be huge incentive to fishermen to use
their knowledge to limit catching excess (ie over-quota) cod.
Effort limitation, including "days at sea",
marine conservation areas and real-time closures
12. The RSPB welcomes that the emphasis
of managing Community fisheries is shifting more towards effort
limitation (management of inputs) and away from management by
catch limits (management of outputs), although the process in
the Fisheries Council is generally to begin with a catch limit
and translate it into an effort limit. All things being equal,
it is more sensitive control to regulate how many vessels put
to sea for how many days (ie fishing effort), than to try and
regulate exclusively what they catch and land.
13. Marine Conservation Areas and
real-time closures have a valuable role to play in supplementing
effort control. Although closed areas (boxes) have been a routine
part of UK fisheries management for many years (classed as Technical
Conservation Measures), the proven benefits—in the right
circumstances—of marine conservation areas (if this means
"No-Take Zones") and real-time closures have been overlooked
for far too long by the UK Government. Real-time closures
have only just been recently introduced on a voluntary basis by
the Scottish whitefish fishermen to avoid areas of spawning and
juvenile cod. They have been a successful part of Norwegian fisheries
management for years and deserve much stronger societal support.
14. Marine Conservation Areas are
always claimed by UK scientists and the sector to be beneficial
only for relatively sedentary species (like scallops) but there
has been no political will to trial them for more mobile species
(as has been done in the Georges Bank, NE United States). A setback
was the 10-week closure for cod in the North imposed by the European
Commission in 2001—this did not assist cod but merely displaced
damaging fishing effort onto adjacent grounds, discrediting the
whole approach so that the baby was effectively thrown out with
the bathwater. What has been lacking has been a well-designed
systematic pilot closure, with the objectives well defined and
the effort displacement anticipated and adjusted for. This is
in no small part down to a strong lobby by the sector to resist
such closures whether they might be beneficial to long-term recovery
or not.
Rights-Based Management tools (RBM)
15. It is not widely understood that various
sorts of RBM already operate in a number of EU Member States,
with the UK no exception: through the Producer Organisations'
(POs) share-out and trading, the UK already has a de facto
system of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs), even if it is
not as explicit as, eg, that operating in the Dutch beam-trawler
fleet.
16. One of the main criticisms of ITQs is
that, over time, they can result in an unhealthy centralisation
of fishing power, to the detriment of small-scale, fisheries-dependent
communities, a trend apparent in Iceland. At the other extreme,
RBM is sometimes over-sold as a "silver bullet", on
the grounds that if you give a fisherman exclusive ownership rights
of a resource, he will look after it better.
17. On balance, the RSPB can agree with
Sissenwine and Symes (2007) that "the Commission's initiative
on RBM [ie its 2007 Communication] is important and worthwhile.
The Commission should not push too hard, but it should keep the
dialog[sic] alive, and it should not undermine formal and informal
arrangements that facilitate a quasi market in rights between
Member States".
Technical Conservation Measures
18. Technical Conservation Measures (TCMs)
are, and increasingly need to be, vital tools in the CFP's armoury.
Much more effort needs to be put into the development of separator
grids, separator trials, and other devices which improve gear
selectivity in trawl nets. TCMs can reduce and even totally eliminate
the bycatch not just of non-target fish species, however,
but also of marine birds, turtles, cetaceans, etc. Where appropriate,
successful and widespread uptake of TCMs needs to incentivised,
however, so that fishermen reap some reward for "smarter"
fishing; this can be mediated through allocating extra days at
sea, differential access to sensitive fishing grounds, etc. For
example, preferential access to fish in a Marine Protected Area
could be conditional on a vessel adapting its gear such that it
did not pose a risk to the nature conservation value of the site.
The new European Fisheries Fund recognises the potential for this
direction much more than did its predecessor and should revitalise
gear modification for stock recovery and for more environmentally-friendly
fishing. While there is a role for incentives, the introduction
of more-selective fishing gear should, in other cases, be mandatory,
with sticks rather than carrots for galvanising compliance (see
below).
Discards and bycatch
19. A recent (2007) Government study of
the amount of fish discarded (because it is too small or the wrong
species) in UK waters found that almost two-thirds of fish caught
were discarded. In the study, between 2002 and 2005, an estimated
186 million fish weighing 72,000t was caught by English and Welsh
vessels operating in the English Channel, Western Approaches,
Celtic and Irish Seas, of which 24,500t (63%) was discarded. In
addition, the FAO estimates that discards in the North Sea amount
to 500,000 to 880,000 tonnes.
20. Currently it is a Commission priority
to reduce discards, and to this end, they produced a Communication[3]
last year. On 31 January 2008, the European Parliament adopted
a resolution[4]
responding to that Communication.
21. The RSPB considers that a policy on
bycatch and discards should be complementary to, and not replace,
other necessary management measures, such as capacity reduction,
technical measures and Marine Protected Areas. The key issue is
to avoid, insofar as possible, unwanted catches in the first place.
By requiring, for example, Best Available Technology for gear
and real-time closures, we are likely to see changes in fishing
behaviour and technology.
22. The RSPB is highly supportive of the
Commission's approach to tackle the issue on a fishery by fishery
basis, and to require a range of measures tailored to specific
fisheries ("métiers"). The Commission also suggests
real-time closures and the obligation to switch fishing grounds
(if you exceed a bycatch limit) as two of the key ways of avoiding
bycatch (as is key to the Norwegian system of bycatch/discard
reduction).
23. These and other tried-and-tested technical
measures for improved gear selectivity, such as a separator grid
for Nephrops (langoustine) trawl nets or a separator panel for
whitefish nets (in both cases to facilitate especially the escape
of juvenile cod), should be made mandatory across all Community
fleets, and the UK Government should push for this. At the moment,
some proven measures are subject only to voluntary uptake, and
fishermen are reluctant to use more selective gear and thus forfeit
bycatch if they see that their competitors are shunning those
measures and retaining that bycatch.
24. The RSPB supports the key element of
the Commission's strategy which is to set a maximum acceptable
bycatch of "non-target" fish for a given fishery,
and to require that bycatch to be retained and landed. This is
what a "discard ban" means in practice, ie non-target
fish are no longer discarded at sea but rather retained on board
and subsequently landed.
25. In the Commission's approach, this maximum
bycatch level for each fishery will be progressively reduced over
time to encourage the technologies capable of avoiding this level
of bycatch in the first place. In this approach, instead of introducing
a particular set of discard reduction measures ("micro-management"),
as has been the traditional approach hitherto, the Commission
is putting the onus on the sector to come up with its own solutions
to reach the reduction target by whatever means they can think
of.
26. The European Parliament's resolution
differs from the Commission in wanting to put off the discard
ban (ie landing bycatch) until such time as it can be shown that
the other measures (to avoid bycatch) have failed, with a maximum
of five years until the discard ban enters force. The RSPB rejects
the European Parliament's five-year stay of execution before a
discard ban kicks in. Instead we support the Commission's approach
to make a discard ban integral from the outset to discard reduction
in selected trial fisheries. We have concerns that unless a ban
is applied from the start, we will not force the solutions (to
avoid catching unwanted fish) quickly enough.
27. The efficacy of a discard ban depends
on (a) being able to enforce it, which will require an on-board
observer scheme (b) provision of incentives to the fishermen to
retain bycatch.
28. The latter includes importantly the
sensitive issue of what compensation fishermen should receive
for landing discards (which may then assist the production of
fish-meal/oil and help relieve the need to target sandeels). It
is important to avoid the scenario in which the market value of
landed discards is not so great as to create an incentive to target
fish which the vessel should be trying to avoid catching in the
first place. To avoid this perverse outcome, the fishermen could
receive as compensation a small percentage of the value of the
unmarketable landed catch, as is currently the case in Norway
and New Zealand.
29. Lastly, in the Commission's Communication,
it is suggested that only finfish and crustaceans caught will
have to be landed. We urge the UK Government to support widening
this to the entire catch, creating the same incentive to avoid
bycatch of other sorts of invertebrates, corals, marine mammals,
seabirds and turtles.
Adapting to climate change
30. It is clear that sea warming and other
shifts driven by climate change will take generations to stabilise
and reverse, even if we act now. These changes can be perceived
as having both positive and negative impacts on fisheries. On
the positive side, the movement of traditionally warm-water species
into our latitudes is creating some new fishing opportunities,
such as the new squid fisheries in the North Sea. Fisheries management
needs to be flexible enough to be responsive to these changes.
31. On the negative side, it appears that
cold-water species such as cod and sandeel may be less resilient
to rapid sea warming, with recruitment adversely affected by changes
in the timing and productivity of the greatly altered plankton
community on which newly hatched fish larvae depend. These are
changes over which man has limited control in the short term,
so it behoves fisheries management to be more precautionary
and reduce fishing effort as necessary.
32. The harvesting rules for sandeel, for
example, had to be radically altered to take account of a chronic
downturn in the stock, and we support this kind of adaptive
management. By the same token, cod (another species affected
by sea warming) has not been recovering as rapidly as anticipated
from the recovery plan, calling for innovative measures, some
of which the sector is starting to implement proactively (eg cod
avoidance plans and real-time closures).
CONTROL AND
ENFORCEMENT
The control and enforcement of the rules of the
Common Fisheries Policy
33. The European Court of Auditors Special
Report (December 4, 2007) exposes the failure by Member States
to effectively control fishing activities by their fleets, demonstrating
the urgent need to seriously strengthen EU control and inspection
systems. Despite claims that existing rules are sufficient to
prevent or seriously limit Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated
(IUU) fishing by EU fleets, the Court of Auditors report states
that "If the political authorities want the CFP to achieve
its objective of sustainable exploitation of the fisheries resources,
the present control, inspection and sanction mechanisms must be
strengthened considerably."
34. The Court of Auditors' report characterises
current sanctions as merely "the cost of doing business".
It is vital to give urgent support to strengthening controls from
"net to plate". In practical terms, many Member States
are not doing enough because, for many fisheries, the cost of
controls outstrips the value of the actual fish caught.
35. In view of this, the RSPB strongly supports
the Commission's proposal for a Council Regulation establishing
a system to prevent, deter and eliminate IUU fishing. The review
and revision of the Control Regulation in 2008 will provide the
opportunity to adopt further corrective action.
36. According to a Commission report in
2007, areas in which Member States need to improve control include
hiring more skilled personnel, dedicating more resources to checking
vessels which fish in international waters, better training for
inspectors, closer cooperation between Member States, and stronger
penalties for flouting the rules.
37. These developments set the agenda for
the Community Fisheries Control Agency (CFCA), established in
2005. Apart from combating IUU fishing, current priorities for
the CFCA include the monitoring of the recovery and management
of cod stocks, protection of bluefin tuna, and the reduction of
destructive fishing practices and discards. With cod stocks still
below safe biological limits and Mediterranean bluefin tuna close
to collapse (and subject to rife IUU fishing), the CFCA faces
a huge challenge. With the Agency still in its infancy, however,
progress over the next two years will be a yardstick of its ability
to deliver.
Serious infringements of the CFP
38. In October 2007, the Commission produced
a Communication and a proposal for a Council Regulation to address
the issue of IUU fishing. The RSPB strongly endorses the intent
behind this proposal to address inter alia the issue of
inequity across Member States in sanctions against illegal fishing.
We look to the UK Government to support the adoption of a robust
Regulation in this regard when it is comes before the Fisheries
Council.
39. The proposed Regulation would: (a) strengthen
the responsibility of Member States to impose sanctions on their
nationals who engage in or support IUU fishing, inside or outside
Community Waters; (b) set measures to harmonise across Member
States the maximum levels of sanctions (such as fines and confiscation
of catches).
40. This harmonisation process is vital
in the fight against IUU fishing. Firstly, it is necessary to
counter the industry-held view in several Member States that,
on the subsidiarity principle, sanctions should be the prerogative
of individual Member States, and therefore that there is no need
for harmonisation. Secondly, a major cause of rule-breaking, even
by vessels in Member States who give high priority to control
and enforcement, is the perception that vessels flagged to other
States are subject to weak national controls. This lack of a level
playing field tends to engender a culture of non-compliance across
all fleets; harmonisation of penalties would go a long way to
remedying this.
STRUCTURAL POLICY
Measures to adjust the capacity of fleets
41. Since 2002, all Member States have reported
a gradual reduction in fleet capacity, mainly as a result of vessel
decommissioning. The overall reduction in tonnage and horsepower
for the EU-15 Member States for 2003-05 was 6.27% and 7.28%, respectively.
In contrast, the reduction in both these capacity measures for
the new Member States was 18%. Most of this reduction was funded
by public aid, especially for the EU-15 Member States.
42. Over the same period, most Member States
also reported a steady decrease in fishing effort, probably reflecting
more a reduction in fishing opportunities (eg effort limits and
lower TACs) than in fleet capacity. Increasing fuel prices have
also probably also helped to put a brake on fishing effort. Against
this background, reduction in fleet capacity is probably not the
main driver of less fishing, although the problem might have been
worse if capacity had not been reduced.
43. Another key reason why the capacity
reductions achieved have not per se been hugely influential
is the phenomenon of the increasing fishing efficiency, year on
year, of those vessels not decommissioned, so-called "technical
creep". The International Council for the Exploration of
the Sea (ICES) indicates that the introduction of new fishing
technology increases fishing power by 1-3% annually (some studies
suggest up to 4%), such that reductions in fleet capacity may
have little or no ability to curb overfishing.
44. Despite this, it is notable that, in
recent years, Scottish whitefish fleet capacity has almost certainly
declined in real terms, decommissioning resulting in the number
of vessels over 10 metres declining by 46% between 1996 and 2006
(Scottish Government statistics).
The European Fisheries Fund (EFF)
45. The RSPB welcomes the new EFF 2007-13,
with its overarching commitment to sustainable development, to
an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management, its emphasis
on the promotion of small-scale coastal fishing and the inshore
sector, and capacity to foster the protection of biodiversity
and nature conservation. The latter is important, given that the
EFF also includes measures to allocate funding to vessel modernisation
and installation of new engines, both of which have the potential
to increase pressure on already depleted fish stocks.
46. However, the fund is relatively small,
and barely commensurate with the aspirations of its new framework,
so it will take considerable effort, imagination and external
scrutiny to avoid a "business as usual" re-run of the
deployment of the Financial Instrument for Fisheries Guidance
(FIFG) which it replaces.
47. Member States are mainly responsible
for selecting projects and implementing their share of the EFF
according to their national and regional priorities. As such,
the UK was required to draft a National Strategic Plan and an
Operational Programme.
48. In February 2006, the RSPB responded
to Defra's consultation on the UK's draft National Strategic Plan
which needed to address the sustainable development of the sector
in a balanced way that took due account of environmental considerations.
While the UK's stated Objectives and Priorities for 2007-13 achieved
that balance, the underlying analysis tended to prioritise the
short-term, economic profitability of the sector (catching, processing
and aquaculture), to the detriment of wider sustainability issues
and stakeholder breadth.
49. Whereas the Scottish Executive consulted
in November 2006 on its proposals for how the EFF should be delivered
in Scotland, they acknowledged that full public consultation on
their plans would need to be part of the UK-wide consultation
on the UK Operational Programme. However, development of the latter
has been subject to undue delay, due to the challenge of agreeing
the split in convergence between the four Fisheries Administrations.
Grants cannot be administered until this has been reconciled,
consulted upon, and a final text agreed. This represents a frustrating
loss of the EFF's momentum but is symptomatic, as is the painfully
slow development of the Marine Bill, of the quagmire that engulfs
the development of coherent and equitable policy in a devolved
UK.
Impact of WTO-level discussions
50. The Doha Round has long been pronounced
dead in circles beyond government trade ministries and WTO headquarters.
Hopefully, a mini-ministerial meeting to resurrect it may be held
in April 2008. However, prospects for an agreement this year remain
unclear, not least because of the US elections.
51. In November 2007, a draft fisheries
text was tabled which, if agreed (a big "if"), would
impose tough limits on subsidies, which the RSPB welcomes if we
are to seriously address global overfishing, including in EU waters.
The proposals on `rules' do not propose a blanket ban on all subsidies
but they list a large number of subsidies that would be banned,
including those for the construction of new vessels, and for operating
costs of fisheries, including fuel. This could have a major impact
on the EU which subsidises fuel for fishing vessels. The RSPB
sees no justification for subsidising fuel costs as this, in turn,
fuels overfishing.
52. The Doha Round negotiating group held
their first formal meeting in January 2008 to discuss the November
2007 draft fisheries text. The meeting highlighted the usual strong
divisions between Member States, from countries supporting an
abolition of all fishing subsidies to others looking to retain
them.
53. Among numerous contentious issues was
whether an exception should be made for subsidising small-scale
fishermen, eg because they contribute less to overfishing than
big offshore vessels. The EU, whose small scale fleets make up
80% of overall fleet capacity, urged that all small-scale fishermen
should be eligible for subsidies in ways currently permitted only
for developing countries. They argued that such fishermen were
among the most vulnerable communities in developed countries as
well as poor ones.
54. The RSPB would be very concerned if
small-scale fishermen in the EU were singled out for subsidy,
not least because small-scale fishing in developed countries like
those of the EU is just as capable of overfishing and inflicting
environmental damage as are offshore fleets. We would certainly
not support any loosening the criteria for EFF spend, given that
the EFF already allows grants for engine replacement which could
indirectly increase fishing capacity.
GOVERNANCE
Regional Advisory Councils (RACs)
55. The RSPB is represented on two of the
RACs (North Sea RAC and North Western Waters RAC) and has some
insight into their performance to date. The advent of the RACs
has led to more constructive dialogue among stakeholders, not
least between the fishing sector and environmental NGOs. It is
early days but some useful advice is being delivered to the Commission.
Key constraints, however, are:
(i) The fishing sector has two-thirds majority
so clearly dominates the agenda and outcomes.
(ii) There is a tendency of the sector to
default to short-term issues (such as TACs and quotas), rather
than focussing on the long-term sustainability issues of much
greater interest to NGOs, eg the sector has no appetite for developing
an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management so it is an
uphill struggle to get this on the agenda.
(iii) The proliferation of RACs (there will
be seven in all), each with its structure of General Assembly,
Executive Committee, working groups and focus groups, is imposing
a great strain on the capacity of all stakeholders to service
the RACs adequately. It is important to retain the balance of
stakeholder participation at all levels in each RAC in order to
deliver equitable outcomes. The challenge of the NGOs to meet
their existing obligations to the RACs makes them wary, however,
of arguing for stronger representation (relative to the sector's
majority).
(iv) By being classed as bodies of public
interest, the RACs have recently been afforded greater funding
security by the Commission but are still challenged in the areas
of communication, research and development. Defra is very supportive
of the North Sea RAC but is alone among Member States in providing
facilities for meetings etc.
56. In pursuit of more decentralised governance,
the RACs should better funded to enable them, for example, to
commission their own research. For the time being, their remit
should certainly be restricted to an advisory role, and any putative
transition to executive-decision making powers should be seen
as part of an evolutionary process which will require many checks
and balances.
How should EU fisheries ideally be governed
57. The CFP's `command and control' approach
to fisheries management from Brussels is becoming unsustainable
with Community expansion, indeed has been for many years, and
has alienated many of those it seeks to manage. In `Reflections
on the Common Fisheries Policy' (2007), David Symes characterises
the situation as:
`Today... there is something faintly ludicrous
about DG Fish—a bureaucracy probably no bigger than the
planning department of an average local sized authority—attempting
to regulate the fisheries of an area that stretches through 40°
of latitude from the Gulf of Bothnia to the Canary Islands and
60° of longitude from the Azores to the eastern Mediterranean.
Even Napoleon might have baulked at an empire of these dimensions!"
58. Where is the system broken? For too
long, UK and other EU Ministers in the Fisheries Council have
traded short-term socio-economic benefits against long term stock
conservation and prosperity for the fishing sector. In recent
years, according to the Commission's own analysis (COM(2007)295),
the Fisheries Council has routinely set catch limits 40-50% higher
than those advised by the scientists, contributing to the demise
of fish stocks such as North Sea cod. The justification for this
inflation is the invoking of socio-economic considerations but
is more realistically an appeasement to fishing constituencies.
59. The EU has to find a way of eliminating
the horse-trading in the December Council which subordinates scientific
advice and sustainability too much to socio-economic considerations.
To this end, the Council should be allotted a lesser role in annual
(short-term) decision-making, and needs to attend more to long
term strategic issues. Short-term political manipulation will
also be reduced if the exploitation limits of fisheries are increasingly
"locked in" by Harvest Control Rules' which cannot be
gainsaid by socio-economic overlay.
60. If there is to be less dependancy on
the Council for annual decision-making, then there is a need for
a rebalance of current roles and responsibilities. The European
Parliament is already guaranteed co-decision on strategic fisheries
issues if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified (see Annex, below). Other
options include:
(i) Some form of regionalisation such as
giving the Regional Advisory Councils (RACs) a more formal role
to develop plans which the Commission can implement without having
to defer to annual decisions by the Council.
(ii) Making more use of Commission working
groups to more fully negotiate proposals before they reach the
Council for adoption.
61. The RSPB supports the need to develop
a more regionalised approach to the delivery of the CFP, not least
as this fits with the model of Integrated Marine Management propounded
by the EC's new Marine Strategy Directive and Maritime Policy
(see Annex). The CFP is already regionalised to an extent but
a truly regionalised structure calls for radical reappraisal of
roles, responsibilities and institutional structures. Just how
this should happen should be the subject of a wide-ranging debate
initiated by the Commission. This needs to start well in advance
of the next CFP review in 2012 if we are to have any hope of achieving
Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) of Community fisheries by 2015,
as required by the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development
(Johannesburg 2002).
February 2007
Annex
RELATIONSHIP OF
THE CFP TO
THE LISBON
TREATY
If the Treaty is ratified, co-decision will
apply to all parts of the CFP, except "measures on fixing
process, levies, aid and quantitative limitations and on the fixing
and allocation of fishing opportunities" (ie the European
Parliament will not have co-decision on setting annual Total Allowable
Catches (TACs) and quotas).
RELATIONSHIP OF
THE CFP TO
THE EC MARINE
STRATEGY DIRECTIVE
The Marine Strategy Directive has been agreed
between the Council and European Parliament but not yet adopted—this
should happen early in 2008. At the heart of the Directive is
the need to achieve (well-defined) "Good Environmental
Status" (GES) by 2020. The Directive for the first time
makes firm links between environmental legislation and the CFP
such that, if fisheries present a problem for achieving GES, the
Commission and Member States are required to act within the framework
of the CFP to address the problem.
1 Fishing opportunities for 2008-policy statement from
the European Commission. Communication from the Commission to
Council. COM(2007)295. Back
2
Sissenwine, M and Symes, D (2007) Reflections on the Common Fisheries
Policy: report to the General Directorate for Fisheries and Maritime
Affairs of the European Commission. Back
3
A policy to reduce unwanted by-catches and eliminate discards
in European fisheries. Communication from the Commission to the
Council and the European Parliament. COM(2007)136 final. Back
4
European Parliament resolution of 31January 2008 on a policy to
reduce unwanted by-catches and eliminate discards in European
fisheries (2007/2112(INI). Back
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