Greenpeace scorns EU reform aimed at sustainable fish stocks

Greenpeace activists chained themselves to fishing buoys outside talks in Luxembourg while others waved banners demanding: “EU ministers, stop overfishing”.

Greenpeace oceans campaigner Thilo Maack said: “Ministers are acting irresponsibly, endangering the future of our seas. The deal would allow a greedy industry to continue overfishing for the next decade, bank-rolled by millions in EU subsidies.

“We cannot allow this to happen and this is why we want ministers to find the guts to stop destructive fishing and reward those who fish responsibly.”

On the table for Europe’s fisheries ministers are the latest European Commission proposals for balancing fishermen’s livelihoods with the need to conserve stocks for the long-term survival of the sector.

After years of dwindling white fish stocks and declining fishing communities, the Commission is also backing growing public resentment that the current CFP encourages “discards” – the dumping of dead fish back in the sea.

The issue has been publicised across the UK by celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, whose “Hugh’s Fish Fight” campaign has been praised by Brussels amid pledges to change a system which forces fleets to dump their “by-catch” – any non-quota fish species they have netted accidentally – or face penalties.

The Commission also wants to bring in a long-term fish quota management system, rather than the discredited annual haggling in which ministers wrangle to raise catch quotas for their own fleets in defiance of scientific warnings about the need for cuts.

The reform plan calls for more accurate scientific evidence on which to base decisions, and for an end to “micro-managing” the fisheries policy in Brussels.

Instead, day to day decision-making would be devolved to regional fisheries bodies across Europe.

The Commission says that in 2004 alone, an estimated 7.3 million tonnes of fish – 8 per cent of the total EU fish catches in that year – were dumped back in the sea.

But no final decisions were being reached yesterday – the aim was an agreement on the “general approach” towards putting EU fisheries back on a sustainable footing.

EU Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki insisted last week that there were signs of fish stock recovery. The Commission has blamed successive years of enforced cuts on fleets routinely breaching catch quotas and delaying stock recovery.