EU member states are not fulfilling their obligations to report on the reduction of fleet overcapacity in fisheries, and the Commission is not doing enough to enforce those obligations, a recent study shows.
The evaluation by the independent Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP), for the Pew Environment group, is based on the 2007 member states reports, released by the Commission last January.
EU member nations are obliged to report annually on their efforts to balance fishing capacity and fishing opportunities, overcapacity having been defined by both NGO’s and Commissioner Joe Borg as an outstanding problem in union waters. The Commission has declared that more than 80 percent of assessed fish stocks in EU waters are overfished, compared with approximately 25 percent globally.
“If overcapacity is one of the key issues, then we need to know how much and where it is,” Markus Knigge, research director of the Pew Environment Group’s EU Marine Programme said when presenting the study in Brussels.
“What this research shows is that, despite the legal obligation, not all Member States have been adequately reporting their fleet overcapacity. Repeated requests to comply have had little effect, making any EU-wide assessment impossible.”
“Overcapacity is contributing to the massive depletion of valuable fish stocks, yet nobody knows how much and where it is occurring,” he added. “It is time to tackle and assess it as a first step to stopping EU overfishing.”
Besides urging EU politicians to clean up their act as for the reporting on fleet reductions, PEW called for a series of further measures, including financial and legal instruments that allow a restructuring of an environmentally more sound EU fleet, setting up capacity management objectives, and an end to subsidies schemes that support overfishing, then shifting funds to support the transition towards a more sustainable fleet that is in balance with the available resources.