EU Parliament calls for looser environmental rules in Common Fisheries Policy reform

The European Parliament voted on Thursday (18 January) in favour of two own-initiative reports on EU fisheries pushed by the conservative EPP, which drop some environmental bans and focus on fleet competitiveness, effectively calling for a reform of the bloc’s Common Fisheries Policy.

Read the original French article here.

The own-initiative report on the future of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), tabled for a plenary vote by its rapporteur, EPP MEP Gabriel Mato, on Thursday (18 January) carried the day with 371 votes in favour, 92  opposed, and 92 abstentions.

“Environmental protection is being achieved at the expense of fishermen’s protection, and ocean governance at the expense of local governance, when fishermen should be at the forefront”, Mato said ahead of the vote.

The last reform of the CFP in 2013 introduced the sustainability concept into the management of fisheries in European waters.

CFP reform and a dedicated Commissioner

But for Mato, the CFP has become “obsolete”, and its “rigid” political objectives are “impossible to implement” for fishermen. While practices and catches must be sustainable, fishing must not be “sacrificed on the altar of the environment”, he added.

Mato’s view on the CFP emerged from an evaluation of the policy in 2023, which indicated that its various obligations had a minimal social and economic impact.

Parliament’s report points the finger at several critical measures of the CFP, such as the one that imposes a maximum number of fish that can be caught without affecting populations, known as MSY.

“Scientists recognise that achieving MSY for all stocks simultaneously is, in practice, impossible,” the new report states.

Similarly, the landing obligation to promote greater selectivity “makes many mixed fisheries unprofitable.”

However, according to the text, by-catches are “inevitable”, especially in mixed fisheries, with the reports stating that existing derogations to the ‘all-catches rule’ should be maintained as the most pragmatic solution.

More generally, the report aims to modernise the CFP and give the fisheries sector the tools to adapt to new challenges such as food security, food safety, intergenerational workforce needs, international competitiveness, and sector decarbonisation.

“Norway, the UK, and Russia have all understood the importance of what is at stake, but the EU is still too faint-hearted and hesitant,” Mato deplored.

The EPP MEP also stressed the urgent need to renovate small-scale fleets with the help of EU funds, particularly for the outermost regions, which have specific needs.

Finally, the report calls on the next European Commission, which will be formed after the EU elections in June, to appoint a fisheries commissioner, as the current one also holds the environment portfolio.

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EU action plan and common market organisation

In another report adopted the same day, MEPs called on the Commission to review its Action Plan on Protecting and restoring marine ecosystems for sustainable and resilient fisheries presented on 21 February 2023.

The strategy, calling for a ban on bottom fishing (dredges, seines, trawls) in marine protected areas (MPAs) by 2030, was poorly received by industry players in the EU, who complained that its consequences would be disastrous for the entire industry.

“We must respect this criticism from fishermen,” said rapporteur Niclas Herbst (EPP), who voiced regret that the European Commission had not taken sufficient account of the socio-economic consequences of these announcements.

In Herbst’s view, the action plan’s “blanket bans” should be abandoned in favour of “regional solutions” decided through dialogue with the main stakeholders.

Environmentalists show opposition

For oceans advocacy group Bloom, the Commission’s plan to ban bottom trawling is “based on existing European law and international scientific recommendations”.

“This Action Plan set(s) out a timetable for implementing a series of crucial measures enshrined in European law to reconcile ocean protection with the ecological transition of the fishing industry,” the NGO added in a press release.

In their view, Herbst’s own-initiative report “amounts to methodical destruction of any environmental and social ambitions”.

A cross-party coalition of MEPs tabled 14 amendments to the Herbst report.

“With its action plan, the European Commission has had the merit of proposing a series of important measures and recognising the impact of bottom trawling on the seabed,“ explained the initiator of the amendments, MEP Carolino Roose (Greens/EFA), accusing the right and its allies of being the “gravediggers of the oceans”.

Bloom was similarly dismayed by Mato’s report, whose reform of the CFP “multiplies its attacks on stock management mechanisms and small-scale fishing”.

The main criticism relates to the desire to maintain unbalanced quotas granted to industrial fishing to the detriment of small-scale fishing.

The NGO stressed that “vessels of less than 12 meters using low-impact fishing methods represent 70% of the European fleet, but they only account for 10% of catches“.

At the same time, however, a representative of the industrial fishing industry, Europêche, welcomed this report on X.

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[Edited by Angelo Di Mambro/Zoran Radosavljevic]

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