Some 200 Greenpeace activists from 14 European countries this morning blocked the seven entrances to the building of the Council of the European Union where EU fisheries ministers were to gather for their annual meeting to discuss fishing quotas. The activists have constructed a wall in front of the building's main entrance bearing the message "Shut Down until Fish Stocks Recover."
The Fisheries Council holds its annual meeting today to decide levels of total allowable catches (TACs). The Council's consistently dismal record provides no basis for expecting that this year's negotiations will introduce steps towards environmentally- and economically-sustainable fisheries in which biodiversity and fish stocks are maintained.
Greenpeace believes that Europe's current decision-making arrangements are in need of urgent review and revision.
"The Fisheries Council has been an utter disaster for fisheries" said Greenpeace EU Marine Policy Advisor Saskia Richartz. "Unless changes are made and power is ceded to Europe's Environment Ministers, Europe's fisheries face a biodiversity and economic collapse"
Since the early 1980s, incompetence on the part of the Fisheries Council has resulted in an alarming decline in fish stocks in European seas. Year after year, Europe's Fisheries Ministers have ignored scientific advice and recommendations from the European Commission in repeatedly agreeing levels of TACs that have destroyed the biodiversity of Europe's seas. A recent study, commissioned by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs, suggests that European fisheries are amongst the most unsustainable and least profitable in the world.
"Were the European Fisheries Council a private enterprise, its executive directors would have been sacked long ago for inefficiency and negligence" said Greenpeace Germany's Oceans Campaigner Iris Menn. "The Fisheries Council has failed to ensure fishing sector profitability, environmental protection, sustainable management and the maintenance of fish stocks. It´s time for new management" she stated.
Greenpeace believes that future decisions on fishing activities in European seas should be subject to greater public scrutiny and must include the following:
- Member States must create a network of large-scale marine reserves: highly protected areas off-limits to all extractive and destructive activities, including fishing. The network of reserves must be sufficiently large to sustain species and ecological processes over time. Research indicates that between 20 per cent and 50 per cent of sea area should be protected in this way. The deadline by which Member States had to complete such a network passed almost a decade ago, in 1998. Member States, however, have continued to reap short term fisheries benefits without complying with the Community's conservation laws;
- All total allowable catches must be set at or below the scientifically recommended levels. For all fish stocks outside safe biological limits, fishing pressure must be reduced to very low levels and should be increased slowly thereafter only when recovery is under way. All stocks should eventually be managed below their maximum sustainable yield; and
- Starting from next year, national allocation of the TACs, which must be set in accordance with the above rules, should be made conditional upon meeting EU marine conservation standards, and in particular rules on marine protected areas.
Source: Greenpeace
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