A new recovery plan for the cod stocks of the North Sea and surrounding waters was agreed on as the EU Fisheries Ministers met in Brussels on December 18-19.
“We have used as a model the recovery plan for the Baltic Sea, which has proved to be successful,” said Sweden’s Minister of Agriculture Eskil Erlandsson, representing a member state where the cod issue has been hotly debated. “I hope and I believe that this new plan will give the cod a good chance to recover in these waters, as well”, he added.
The plan was a priority for many North European countries that have fishing activities over the marine area affected (the Channel, North Sea, Irish Sea, West of Scotland, Skagerrak and Kattegat).
This point of the agenda was originally dealt with at the Monday session, but was postponed and a compromise proposal was worked out overnight, Swedish government sources said.
This compromise essentially provides for:
- Considerable work on the member states’ part to reduce the fishing effort in zones covered by the recovery plan, while planning more flexible mechanisms for vessels which fish very little cod.
- Fixing Total Allowable Catches (TACs) in accordance with the status of the resource. For the North Sea, which is subject to management measures jointly with Norway, the aim is to obtain a rise in TACs between 35 and 44%.
The Swedish Radio reported that the plan contained a mix of catch quotas, rules for the number of days spent at sea and incentives for fishermen to use more selective tools. The Swedish Board of Fisheries said that the plan will introduce a new term, “kilowatt-days”, meaning “fishing capacity measured in kilowatts, multiplied with the number of days all vessels in the area have been there”.
The recovery plan will be enforced from Jan. 1 next year.
On Monday, The Commission also presented its proposal for the reform of the Fisheries Control Community framework. The fisheries ministers’ initial reactions were “favourable to improving control, but they also underlined the financial, human and technical costs arising from this proposal”, the French Presidency said on its website.