Six Swedish trawler owners have been granted 4.9 million euros in subsidies for scrapping their vessels, enabling Sweden almost at once to live up to its national goal of reducing the fleet trawling for cod in the Baltic by ten percent by 2010.
The decision by the Swedish Board of Fisheries gives the owners six months to scrap their ships for the sum to be paid out. The total tonnage for the six vessels in case is 1,040, and a ten per cent reduction of the Swedish cod-trawling Baltic fleet would be 1,100 tons.
The subsidy per ship, most of which are based on the Swedish West Coast, varies between 545,000 and one million euros. 75 per cent stem from the EU budget, and 25 per cent are national subsidies.
“This is an important underway goal in our work to adjust the size of our fishing fleet, and it will be important both for the stock management and for those fishermen who remain”, the Board of Fisheries said.
Sweden has set an overall goal of reducing the capacity of its whole trawler fleet by 50 per cent by 2015. A campaign to make owners fishing along all Swedish coasts scrap tonnage will pursue this spring.