Too much community funding towards Member States fisheries control programmes is spent on hard investments such as the purchase of aircrafts and vessels, rather than for training and recruitment of control staff according to the EU Commission.
The Commission gave a presentation at a recent meeting with the Advisory Committee for Fisheries and Aquaculture (ACFA) of the EU financial contribution towards Member States fisheries control, inspection and surveillance programmes. Between 1996 and 2007, the EU paid out a total of €223.6 million.
Most Member States have chosen to spend the bulk of funding for purchase and modernisation of control instruments such as aircrafts and vessels. 75% of the community financing for control has been spent for this purpose. Important measures such as training and recruitment of control personnel and implementation of VMS, have only received 3% of the community financing respectively.
The Commission would like to see a change in the way community financing is distributed, towards an increase in training and recruitment of staff and the implementation of VMS as well as improved IT systems, rather than only using the funding for hard investments. According to the Commission, some Member States are seeing this programme as an instrument for special and more expensive investments. “We see that many Member States lack competent control staff. It is useless to spend money on expensive aircrafts and vessels if there is a lack of competent staff”, said Mr Cuervo-Spottorno from the DG Fish, at the ACFA meeting earlier this week.
The Commission also wants to strike a balance between the Member States capacity of control and enforcement, since some Member States are lagging behind. Looking at the community financial contribution towards different Member States, there are striking differences. During 2006 and 2007 UK requested €8.9 million, Spain €7.2 million, Italy €5.9 million, Sweden €5.3 million, DK €1.7 million, Poland €495 000 and Ireland only €225 000.
Poland recently confessed to having a big problem with illegal fishing of cod in the Baltic Sea, where more than 50% is fished above the established quota. Although Poland has committed itself to improve their fisheries control, they have only applied for a slight increase in community funding for control and enforcement for 2008 compared to recent years, according to the Commission.