Polish law states that the waters within three nautical miles of the coastline should be exempt from bottom trawling, but Greenpeace and local small-scale fishermen say that these rules are flouted by trawlers. The aim of the boulders is to draw attention to and prevent further poaching and destructive fishing practices.

According to local fishermen from Dzwirzyno, “when they trawl out near the shore, (they) catch all they meet on their way and destroy the sea bottom. They also destroy our nets ….if they fish out all the small fish, the cod will not have enough to eat. As this goes on, we will not have anything to fish. The zone free from trawling should be no 3, and at least 6 miles offshore. ”

The trawlers are said to target sandeel, which is processed into fishmeal. Sandeel are an unregulated and unmanaged fishery, which is not limited by quotas. Overfishing of the stock could affect larger fish in the ecosystem, such as cod, herring and sprat. Greenpeace hope that their action will dissuade any poachers from trawling in the area and risk damaging their gear on the boulders.

If she accepts, the trilogue negotiations will have been a failure for the European Parliament, which voted through an ambitious reform package at the plenary in February. On the other hand if she pushes for an earlier timeline for implementation of Fmsy and a target for Bmsy, an improved text on capacity evaluation and management, and a discard ban which can be effectively controlled, then the Lithuanian Presidency will likely match their Irish counterparts for ambition.

Simon Coveney, the Irish Minister whose team is responsible for negotiating on behalf of the Council, has already made clear that any significant alterations proposed will be rejected. They have managed to come closer to Rodust and negotiate within Council a lowering of the level of catch that fishermen can discard from a final level of 7% to 5% (in 2019), a mention of biomass in the basic Regulation. New text was also inserted to allow for quotas to be increased during the year if there has been a significant change in the scientific assessment of a stock. The question is whether this will appease the Parliament sufficiently to seal the deal.

At the moment, the negotiation hangs in the balance. Over the next ten days, the Parliament’s negotiation team will look over the final package put forward, which is as yet not publicly available, and come to a decision on how to proceed. If they accept it will be a bitter pill to swallow, fish stock recovery will be more uncertain and further delayed and there will be no full discard ban. Moreover, a further complication is that Member States may not be able to access EU subsidy money from the EMFF package in 2014, as that file is itself also much delayed.

The Irish Minister whose country holds the EU Presidency, Simon Coveney, has sought to be assertive with both the Parliament and his fellow Ministers in the hope of securing a deal. At the opening of the Council meeting he emphasised the need for Member States to be flexible in order to break the deadlock, although the subsequent statements from a significant portion of Ministers were not conducive to the spirit of compromise.

Coveney also warned the Parliament’s rapporteur Ulrike Rodust (S&D, DE) that if she held out for a better deal than would be offered after this Council meeting, discarding would continue for some time and she would have to wait until the next Presidency to have further negotiations. Rodust hit back by telling the Council that “we are ready to compromise, but won’t support a non-reform. Stop overfishing and wasteful discards!”

Many Ministers are however keen to continue overfishing and merely reduce discards, rather than ban them. This intractability means that implementation of the CFP reform could be delayed for a second year unless a deal is struck tonight, with fish stock recovery also being postponed.

A recent study, Neubauer et al. 2013, has been used by WWF Germany to call for the Parliament’s proposals on MSY to be adopted because “if their proposal was implemented 75 percent of EU stocks could recover within the next 10 years.” By contrast “the later F is reduced to Fmsy level, the longer recovery takes and the higher the uncertainty about whether a recovery can be attained….(Council’s proposals) would continue to expose already overfished stocks to catch levels that are too high and have adverse effects, causing long delays in stock recovery.”

The message to Minsters is clear: act now, recover stocks, then realise the benefits.

In February, the European Parliament plenary voted and provided a finalised negotiating mandate on the basic Regulation for rapporteur Ulrike Rodust (S&D, DE) ahead of trilogue negotiations with the Irish Presidency and the Commission.

Since then, the Council has however stuck to their General Approach agreed in June 2012. Only with regard to the issue of discards has an amended position been put forward, and on this a discard reduction plan was preferred by Member States to a ban.

With less than two months left of the Irish Presidency and time running out to secure a reformed CFP, Member States have of late been involved in intensive negotiations amongst themselves to push the reform forward. Much will depend on the outcome of this Council meeting in determining whether a deal will be brokered or if the deadlock will continue into the second half of the year.

Key issues such as the restoration of fish stocks through the MSY principle, the discard ban, capacity management and regionalisation remain unresolved. Moreover, the contentious issue of whether co-decision is required for the setting of fishing limits within long-term management plans has been shelved until a legal decision is reached.

The Rodust olive branch is seen as an attempt to prevent Parliament being responsible for a breakdown in the negotiations, with the ball now back in the Irish Presidency’s court.

The ambition of restoring fish stocks to above Bmsy levels by 2020 has been a cornerstone of the Parliament’s position and on this issue some Member States have spoken in favour of matching the proposal. To this end, WWF have written to the Swedish finance minister, Anders Borg, calling on him to encourage fellow EU ministers to be supportive so that Member States may realise the socio-economic benefits of the MSY approach.

For the reform to be concluded under the Irish Presidency, a deal will have to be reached by the end of May so that it can be rubberstamped at the subsequent Council and European Parliament plenary meetings.  At the trilogue, the Parliament and Council have thus far stuck closely to their mandates on the core issues – positions that were finalised in February.

Rapporteur for the basic Regulation Ulrike Rodust (S&D, DE) has been backed by a large majority in the Parliament, while the Irish Presidency secured the support of all Member States other than Sweden for the General Approach.

Since the start of the trialogue in March, areas with small disparities have been dealt with by junior officials, but four key unresolved issues remain: maximum sustainable yield (MSY), discards, regionalisation and capacity management. As a result, an additional trilogue meeting has already been added to the six originally scheduled.

At the meeting on 16 April in Ireland, top civil servants from all EU Member States met to iron out their differences on these four key issues. However, no conclusions were reached and at the subsequent Council meeting little progress was made. In order to move the process forward, the forthcoming Coreper meeting on 2 May will see a new Council mandate being discussed, in order to provide the Irish Presidency with more room for negotiation in the trilogues.

In order to broker a compromise deal, the Irish Presidency may present a revised concrete proposal to the Council on 13-14 May, although only one trilogue remains after this date. This would allow them to move toward the Parliament and make it easier to finalise the reform. Although given the lengthy negotiation required to secure the agreement of most Member States to the General Approach, this could prove difficult. Alternatively, the Commission may produce compromise proposals for the remaining unresolved issues.

As trilogues have no publically available agendas or minutes, the process lacks transparency and stakeholder oversight. Moreover, the lack of compromise on key issues in the reform has caused a backlog of the most complex topics being saved for the last minute. Further delays in the negotiation will only serve to put more pressure on the actors in the trilogue.

This makes the possibility of a rushed deal more likely, which could result in a less well-thought through reform with loopholes required to get actors to sign up to the deal. Alternatively, delays beyond June would leave the Lithuanian Presidency to finalise the reform of the basic Regulation, as well as handling the EMFF trilogues and the Council meetings regarding TACs and quotas later in the year. An administrative burden that would likely be beyond even the most resourced Member State.

By squeezing the timelines to such an extent, the trilogue now runs the risk of repeating the same mistakes that have caused the poor state of many EU fish stocks. As the Swedish political commentator Annika Ström Melin pointed out in an article praising the European Parliament’s position on the CFP, entitled “fisheries policy is better with more democracy”, a lack of transparency in the Council has been one of the major reasons behind the failure of the EU to manage its fisheries. An important thought for negotiators to bear in mind whilst they map out the next decade of EU fisheries management in private.

MEPs have substantially strengthened the initial Commission proposals, in particular by calling on minimum conservation reference sizes (MCRS) to “be in line with the size at maturity of the species concerned….(and to) establish joint MCRS with Norway in order to create a more level playing field”. The initial proposals would have meant that EU fishermen could sell juveniles for several species for human consumption.

Moreover, by improving proposals on gear modifications, including increases of general mesh requirements, as well as on the need to minimise catches of unwanted species, the European Parliament (EP) has put in place measures that will allow improvements in selectivity to be at the forefront of the discard ban. A landing obligation which leads to the continuation of large quantities of juveniles being caught, as well as the bycatch of non-target species, would fail to benefit the conservation of stocks.

One area for concern however is the proposed automatic quota increases, which are seen as compensation for compliance with the discard ban. Such increases would seek to match the current quantity of fish that is discarded, thereby allowing fishing mortality to remain constant. According to the EP, “there
is
no
reliable
information
on
how
much
fish
is
actually
discarded,
but
it
is
clear
that
the
raise
of
the
TACs
should
be
substantial”. Niels Wichmann of the North Sea RAC and Danish Fishermen’s Federation has however called for increases to be as high as 50%.

It is our opinion that while this proposal makes sense for stocks which are managed in line with the MSY objective, there must be a clear scientific basis underpinning changes to TACs. Moreover, mandatory quota increases for all stocks, regardless of their conservation status, is not in line with the objectives of the Common Fisheries Policy.

The Council will now take up the Skagerrak file, likely before the end of the Irish Presidency, and either agree to the EP proposals or make further amendments and conclude the process in trilogue negotiations.

FISH, Coalition Clean Baltic, Oceana and other stakeholders in the region have come together in a call for action to improve practices and protection in the Baltic Sea. The targets are there; now we have to meet them!

As one of the partners that initiated the Race for the Baltic campaign, FISH is proud to announce the official launch today. The campaign brings together stakeholders that care for the Baltic Sea to create a coalition made up of NGO’s, businesses, concerned citizens and policy makers who are determined to see the environmental health of the Baltic Sea restored.

Our campaign will be gathering support over the coming months and will culminate in the handover of a Call for Action to our Ministers of Environment in Copenhagen on 3 October in connection with the HELCOM Ministerial meeting.

The call for action is focused on three asks:

1.  REVIVE the biological diversity of the Baltic Sea.

2. RECOVER the natural wealth of the fish stocks in the Baltic Sea to ensure long-term sustainability.

3. RESTORE the water quality through a reduction of nutrients and pollutants flowing into the Baltic Sea.

Our objective in the short term is to ensure that politicians at the HELCOM Ministerial meeting in October take action to fulfil the obligations that have been agreed upon to address the pressing environmental issues in the Baltic Sea. We believe that the Baltic Sea region can become a model for management and protection of the marine environment across the EU and globally.

To show our commitment, we will bike around the Baltic Sea this summer, visiting 9 countries and riding around 3 500 km in 3 months, collecting signatures from the public and other stakeholders.

We hope that you can join us in our campaign activities and become an official partner, supporter or even sponsor of the Race for the Baltic. Together we can show our politicians that there is a strong support for action and that we are many that care about the Baltic Sea environment.

You can support the Race for the Baltic in a number of ways:

• Sign the petition and show that you care for the Baltic Sea
• Visit the new Race for the Baltic site
  

The seas of West Africa are the most profitable for the Chinese fleet. In these waters, close to 3 million tonnes per year are said to have been caught, with a value of over €5.5 billion per year. The vast majority of this is caught be bottom trawlers, with purse seiners also providing a significant contribution.

Such high levels of catches may be in violation of the bilateral agreements China has with governments who own the fish resources, although information concerning the use of these public resources is not publically available.

The study’s lead author, Daniel Pauly, was critical of the poor quality of reporting that China has submitted to the FAO. He stated that “we need to know how many fish have been taken from the ocean in order to figure out what we can catch in the future….Countries need to realise the importance of accurately recording and reporting their catches and step up to the plate, or there will be no fish left for our children”.

According to Greenpeace, sub-Saharan Africa is now the only region on earth where per capita fish consumption is falling, largely because foreign fishing fleets have removed so much fish. This is of particular concern due to the relatively high levels of population in the region who are dependent on seafood as their main source of protein.

Richard Grainger, chief of statistics for the FAO, disputed the results of the study however. The agency argues that the estimates of Chinese catches off West Africa were “far too high”.

Last week, Scottish MEP Struan Stevenson (ECR) hosted a breakfast meeting in the European Parliament to discuss the international implications of EU decisions on its new European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF). The Fisheries Committee rapporteur, French MEP Alain Cadec (EPP) is currently pushing for funding for renewal of small-scale and coastal fishing vessels – a move that would bring back subsidies abolished in the previous CFP reform ten years ago.

At the meeting, MEPs and representatives from the Member States and the Commission met with James Brown, First Secretary to New Zealand’s mission to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva and a leading negotiator on international fisheries subsidies. New Zealand is part of a group of countries in WTO known as the “Friends of Fish” seeking to significantly reduce fisheries subsidies through the WTO Doha negotiations.

The meeting was attended by around 35 people and focused on the global repercussions of the ongoing EU discussions about the proposed European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF). If the EU decides to bring back subsidies for building new vessels, it would be in breach with earlier EU submissions to the WTO which proposes unconditional prohibition of subsidies for vessel construction and vessel modernisation. According to James Brown, this could have a great impact on the EU negotiation position in the future.