Examination of Witness (Questions 610-619)
Mr Carlos Larrañaga
7 MAY 2008
Q610 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed for finding the time to come and help us with this inquiry.
This is a formal evidence-taking session of our Sub-Committee,
so a record will be taken. The transcript will be made available
to you as soon as possible and you can modify it if any errors
have come in. I wonder if we could start by me asking you a general
question. Where do you see the Common Fisheries Policy going?
What changes would you like to see in the CFP?
Mr Larrañaga: First of all, it is a pleasure
for me to be here and respond to your request. The second thing
is that I ask your patience because, I am sorry, I will make mistakes
with my English.
Q611 Chairman: So do we!
Mr Larrañaga: It is a pleasure for me
to be here and it is an honour to respond to your request. We
are following the questions that I have received?
Q612 Chairman: Yes. I think the difficulty
is that there are more questions than we have time to cover because
we only have half an hour, so, rather than asking question number
one, how would you like to see the Common Fisheries Policy developing,
the future of the Common Fisheries Policy?
Mr Larrañaga: I would like to put on
the table the Spanish position about that. In general it is difficult
to explain this but, as you know, the targets of the Common Fisheries
Policy are the same as those of the Common Agricultural Policy
and take into account that for us it is necessary to continue
working to support the stakeholders, the fishermen, and to try
to give them more possibilities to develop economic and social
solutions to their problems, but at the same time it is necessary
to take into account the new situation with research and so on.
The problem for us is that there is a balance to be struck between
continuous fishing at a sustainable level and at the same time
maintaining our fishermen and our jobs. We have a lot of problems
right now because the WTO is putting on the table a liberalisation
of fisheries products. It is so difficult to defend or prioritise
European products with respect to the problems for Third Countries,
and at the same time the European Union is the best market in
the world for fisheries products. This is the reality right now.
Everybody outside, Third Countries, wants to put their fisheries
products into our market. We are importing right now in Spain
over one million tonnes of fisheries products. In the United Kingdom
I think the quantity is similar. In the European Union there is
a need for fisheries products but at the same time Spain thinks
it is impossible to continue asking for priority for European
fisheries products. As you know, one of the targets of the Common
Fisheries Policy is to maintain the presence of European product
supplies against the others. It is difficult to maintain this
today but we are interested in continuing to offer solutions to
our fisheries sector so that they can change their way of life
if it is necessary to abandon the fishery sector, but also to
offer fishermen other possibilities to continue working near the
fisheries, not only directly but also with the producers of the
fishery activity.
Q613 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
You seem to want more flexible arrangements with possibly individual
transferable quotas, and I was wondering how far you would like
to go with that, whether quotas could be transferred between producer
organisations and between countries and what the long-term result
of this might be for your communities.
Mr Larrañaga: Spain supports totally
this possibility but we are taking into account as well that there
could be in the future the possibility of problems if there are
several associations with all the rights for fisheries products,
and to avoid that it will be necessary to include several conditions,
but we think the best way to deal with this is to offer the possibility
of changing the situation and doing business with the fisheries
rights. We have in Spain several examples of that. We had a problem
about 15 years ago with the swordfish fisheries. Spain decided
to agree the quotas with the fishermen and after two or three
years the fishermen decided to change the rights between them
and we have right now a fishing fleet only with swordfish. It
is at a good economic level. It has good performance and continuous
fishing and we can control the catches and the markets as well.
We have a problem right now with imports of swordfish from Third
Countries but in general the problem has been solved and we are
happy with this. I think it is possible to continue working in
this way with the other Member States.
Q614 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
So would you help your fishermen to buy quota?
Mr Larrañaga: No. Quota is another big
problem in Spain. We are saying "rights" but they are
not rights in general because the state of Spain has got the rights
and agrees these rights between the fishermen, but in general,
taking into account the history of the families and other people
working in the fisheries sector, Spain agrees these rights between
the fishermen but Spain does not give the fishermen money to buy
these rights. We only use the money from the European Union in
bilateral fisheries agreements.
Q615 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
What would happen if you could transfer rights from, say, Poland
to Spain? Would you want to do that?
Mr Larrañaga: Yes. If fishermen from
Poland decided to divide between the stakeholders the rights,
in this case Spain would accept that but all we are saying is
that the last control, the last power, is the Spanish Government's,
but it is possible between the fishermen. Right now I do not have
the answer to that. Yes, it is an important question. What would
happen in the future if another fisherman of another Member State
had got all the rights of our fishermen? I do not know right now
but in general we are open to discussion about that. We are open
to working in this way and trying to find solutions to that.
Q616 Viscount Ullswater: I note from
what you have said that you would like to control a lot of the
fishing by controlling effort, although I think you explain that
it is a very complex way of deciding between individual vessels
what the effort should be. Would you see effort being more important
than quotas in the future? How would you think that should be
controlled?
Mr Larrañaga: That is an important question
because, as you know, right now we have a Commission proposal,
the modification of the Cod Recovery Plan. The Commission is trying
to establish a new system with effort only. It is with the TAC
at the same time but the most important point of view of the Commission
is to try to deal with the problem with fishery effort limitation.
Spain totally supports this point of view but we have several
problems which it is necessary to solve first. For example, right
now there is a problem about knowing how many cod are one kilowatt.
It is difficult to establish but it is better to decide it. In
general it is better to deal with effort limitation because it
will be cheaper and it will be easy to control, and at the same
time the fishermen at the beginning of the year could try the
campaign the whole year, "I have 100 fishing days. I will
try to establish my business, taking this into account. I will
make contracts with other fishermen, using the best moment of
the market to sell my fish". Taking into account all these
questions will it be better for the fishermen to work with fishing
days and at the same time for the Government will it be cheaper
and easier to control the activity? There are several technical
and political questions to solve before we can effect this proposal.
Q617 Viscount Ullswater: Do you think
the fishermen, the stakeholders, are in favour of this because
they must be worried about the viability of their boats if they
are only allowed to fish a certain number of days? Are they worried?
Mr Larrañaga: Yes. For example, in the
United Kingdom the problem was difficult about the fishing days
for the cod fisheries. In the end, if I only have 12 or 15 days
it is impossible to maintain my company because I will need money
and I will need to obtain a balance in this company. With the
new Cod Recovery Plan the Commission is trying to avoid this problem
by offering more days to continue fishing but the Commission is
aware that if I put only a few days the sector will immediately
reject that because it is impossible with ten or 12 days per month,
and fortunately the Commission is trying to put effort limitation
in a package with the Member States. The Member States will have
a whole package with this effort limitation and the Member States
will agree this effort limitation, taking into account the necessities
of the sector and avoiding giving just a few days, impossibly
few days.
Q618 Viscount Brookeborough: Would
you see trading in fishing effort, in kilowatts or days at sea,
as a natural progression? How would it work?
Mr Larrañaga: This is another problem
because if the Commission decided to change totally and work only
with fishing days, the first question to establish is the period,
taking into account my level of fishing effort. The Commission
has figures taking into account the fishing effort in 2002, but
there are now fewer fishing boats than in 2002 and the Commission
will discuss with Member States reducing the top level of fishing
effort. In this case there will be a political problem and it
will be necessary to solve this question in the Council because
again I will have fewer days than I have right now, and it is
a problem because immediately I will need to decommission fishing
boats and I will have not only an internal political problem but
a social problem as well, and I will need to put more money on
the table to solve the internal political problems of Member States.
Right now we have the European Fisheries Fund. I think it is enough
to support the target of the Member States right now but if you
put on the table a new scenario the European Fisheries Fund will
not be enough to solve this problem. It will be necessary to put
on the table a new proposal to support the fishermen in order
to reduce the capacity.
Q619 Chairman: Would Spain want to
have a decommissioning policy now to reduce capacity further?
Mr Larrañaga: We are in favour of that.
We are happy with the European Fisheries Fund. We are making proposals
to our fishing sector to decide to take this opportunity to reduce
capacity because we have problems of balance. It is necessary
to reduce capacity in order to continue sustainable activity.
We are offering these possibilities. I do not know right now but
I think our fishing sector would continue using the new possibilities
with the new European Fisheries Fund, and at the same time they
are asking us for solutions to reduce the fuel price. We are offering
them possibilities to change the engine power of the fishing boats
and to find more practical ways to continue fishing but reduce
the price of the activity.
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