Examination of Witness (Questions 800-807)
Mr Robin Rosenkranz
8 MAY 2008
Q800 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
Do I gather from what you were saying that you do not approve
of the way they have grouped some of their responsibilities, because
we have heard some other comments along those liens?
Mr Rosenkranz: I try not to. Let us say we might
have some fears as well but we will definitely give the Commission
the benefit of the doubt. We will not be able to influence this
anyway, at least not Sweden, so—how do you put it?—if
you cannot beat them, join them.
Chairman: We will move on to Lord Plumb's question
on rights-based management. In responding to Lord Plumb could
you also touch on your view of relative stability and the centrality
or otherwise of it?
Q801 Lord Plumb: This refers to the
debate that has been launched by the Commission on rights-based
management. If you could tell us what your Government's position
is on the tradability of fishing rights, which is something that
has come up in the whole of our discussions, and whether you share
the concerns that an ITQ system might lead to an undesirable concentration
of fishing rights either in particular geographical regions or
among certain types of vessel, we would be very interested to
hear your views on that.
Mr Rosenkranz: This is a pertinent and very
important issue. I might start by saying that in Sweden many years
ago we were not in favour of ITQ systems or rights-based management
systems. The reasons were various but one of them was, is it right
to have a public resource like a fishing resource turned into
a commercial interest? This is a common heritage for the citizens
and the states. Why should this be handed over to private interests?
Now we might look at it a bit differently. As I said before, one
of the major problems with the CFP is that the fleet is too big
in balance to the resource and that puts pressure on the politicians
to decide on quotas which are unsustainable, which means that
the next year we have to decrease the quotas or keep them at an
unsustainable level. It is a vicious circle and one of those vicious
circles is, of course, that the fishing fleet is too big. However,
using the fisheries funds and the public money we have in the
community is not enough to decrease the fishing fleet to a sustainable
level. It would cost us so much money to decrease the fishing
fleet to a sustainable level. Therefore, now we are beginning
to think differently and we see that some of this could be also
financed by the market by introducing rights-based management
systems. What we as an example could do is turn over the resource
to the fishermen and allow them to decide whether they want to
try to stay in the market or sell it for a reasonable price. Of
course, coming to your second question, this will mean fewer vessels
and for every vessel leaving the fishery it will be more profitable
for the ones that remain, but this will be regulated partly by
the Government's fund, by the scrapping and decommissioning, but
also partly by the market. This might be a way of speeding up
the necessary decrease of the fishing fleet. How do we do it to
avoid disadvantages? In Sweden, as in the UK, we have a big coast.
So we have coastal regions which we think should in some way benefit
and we think that there should be ways of introducing ITQs or
rights-based management systems and still taking regional concerns.
We could for instance set aside part of the quota for regions—and
we ccould say that everything within the 12-mile zone should be
fished by the regions and everything outside can be distributed
with ITQs. You can go even further than that. Why should it just
be in Sweden? It could be a market between Sweden and Denmark
and the Netherlands. Looking at the Netherlands pelagic fleet,
they own a lot of the UK quota already as well as the Swedish
quota, so we have that already in some aspects, but this is for
the future to see how we can construct a system which can help
us decrease the fleet faster, but we think that we can, in constructing
the system, also take regional concerns into account because as
long as we have these regional concerns we will have to take care
of them as well.
Q802 Lord Plumb: Is this an area
where the RACs would have a role?
Mr Rosenkranz: Yes, absolutely.
Q803 Lord Plumb: This is regional,
as you say, very much a hands-on operation, I think.
Mr Rosenkranz: Yes indeed. It is very difficult
for me to foresee exactly what role they would have, but they
could very much be involved in this.
Q804 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
Just carrying on from that, as you rightly say, over-capacity
is the big problem and you have 30% over-capacity in your pelagic
fleet and 50% in the rest. Even if you transfer the quotas you
need somehow to reduce the capacity in a more effective way than
just in the marketplace. Have you got a big decommissioning programme?
Mr Rosenkranz: We have a decommissioning programme
but there is not enough money in it to decommission all that we
need to. I spoke to the Commission the other day about it. There
has been a huge change within the fishing fleets around Europe.
Before they said, "We do not want to decommission. We want
to stay in our business. My father did this, my grandfather did
this; I am not leaving". Today it is very different. With
the present fuel prices and lack of resources there are probably
more fishermen asking for decommissioning money than before. We
are in a different situation now.
Q805 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
If there were to be encouragement from the European Fisheries
Fund, for instance, for major European-wide decommissioning, should
it be left to Member States or do you think there would be Member
States trying to hold their fishing fleet together and not utilising
it?
Mr Rosenkranz: That is a very good question
because, of course, the one who remains in the end is the winner.
It will have to be managed in some way. It has to be managed by
the Member States but maybe you could find incentives from regulations
like the new CFP or from the Commission to make sure that all
Member States do what they need to do. You can have some kind
of coercive diplomacy. I am not sure what we are looking for here
but it has to be divided so that all Member States make an effort.
We have failed when it comes to decommissioning because we have
not reached the level that we have aimed for, but the Commission
could propose much higher levels of decomissions so that all Member
States have to make a large effort and then they would have to
take a clearer stand on ITQs, et cetera. Trying to find stronger
incentives could be a way forward.
Q806 Chairman: Just to finish off,
what do you think of so-called fuel subsidies?
Mr Rosenkranz: I think they are horrible[4].
Q807 Chairman: That is why I asked.
It seems to be a particularly perverse policy.
Mr Rosenkranz: Yes.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
4 The fundamental problem in the fisheries sector is
the poor stock situation and the over capacity. The net profit
of the European Fisheries is very poor (less than 7% of landed
value). Furthermore, the stock situation in EC waters on average,
is poor; European fish stocks are overfished by 81% to be compared
to a worldwide average of "only" 25%. By subsidizing
fuel we continue to lower the net profit, we continue to make
it less expensive for fishermen on declining and weak stocks.
The result will no doubt make the trend of declining stock continue.
What we should do is rather adjust the fleet capacity with decommissioning
and scrapping vessels so that there is a balance between fleet
and stock.
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