A Dutch NGO says it is ”deeply disappointed” with its government’s recently approved national management plan for eel, and doubts that it will be “accepted in Brussels”.
Compared to an earlier draft, a two-month fishing closure has been scrapped in the final plan. The remaining main measure to meet the EU goal of a 40 per cent escapement of fertile eel is a requirement for fishermen to set out 157 tons of silver eel annually. For this they will be compensated with a total of 700,000 euros.
“The plan completely ignores the seriousness of the situation and the possibility of any recovery”, Stichting De Noordzee (The North Sea Foundation), said in a website comment. “It is not five to twelve on the clock. It is one to twelve. Europe still has only 1% of the amount of eel it had 20 years ago”.
The EU Fisheries Ministers last year called for the Member States to submit national management plans for the dwindling eel stocks to the Commission by the end of 2008. The pronounced goal in the regulation is that 40 per cent of the eel in EU waters will be able to return to the Sargasso Sea to spawn. The Commission is expected to publish its compilation of the national plans later this spring.
The most radical national plan so far has been announced by Ireland, which included a total eel fishing ban, described by a Swedish top fisheries bureaucrat as “impressively forceful”.