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EU: s fiskerikontroller - har miljöorganisationer mer makt än industrin?
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In a report on ‘The Revision of the EU Fisheries Control System’ the EU Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA) stated that the objectives of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) were to ensure that fishing and aquaculture activities are environmentally sustainable and consistently managed to achieve long-term economic, social and employment benefits:
“However, its success depends very much on the implementation of an effective control and enforcement system.
“Regulation (EC) No 1224/2009, often called the ‘Fisheries Control Regulation’, which was created and came into force in 2010 to provide a system of monitoring, inspection and enforcement for fishing operations in EU waters and activities of the EU fleet globally.
“However, there are significant weaknesses in the implementation of this system, and since its publication in 2020 new technologies have become available to assist with control. These loopholes were identified in the current legislation as well as its implementation by the European Court of Auditors and they have called for more efforts in EU fisheries control.
European Commission proposal
On 30 May 2018, the European Commission published a proposal for the revision of the fisheries control system to address these loopholes.
This proposal introduced requirements for more complete fisheries data collection and publication, including introduction of an electronic tracking system for all EU fishing vessels, fully digitized reporting by all vessels of their catches with electronic logbooks and landing declarations, and rules for recreational fishers to declare all catches.
It also proposed improvements to seafood traceability through digitized identification and of all fishery and aquaculture products along the supply chain, whether from EU fisheries or imported.
And it suggested a revision to enforcement rules as well as proposing a strengthened point system and also revises the mandate of the European Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA), to fully align its objectives with the CFP and to upgrade its inspection powers, and Regulation 1005/2008 on illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, to introduce a digital database for catch certifications for imported fishery products.
Meanwhile back in Brussels, it would seem that every step taken by the EU Commission and the EFCA with regards to fisheries control is being closely monitored by the EU Fisheries Control Coalition – a body with an official-sounding name that would lead one to believe that they are part of the EU Commission themselves but, in reality, are a group of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with agendas of their own.
This group consists of: Client Earth, the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), FishSec, The Nature Conservancy, Oceana, Our Fish, Scianena, Seas at Risk, and WWF.
The response by this body of NGOs to the 2018 report was to advise the EU Council how they could better work towards fully documented and transparent EU fisheries:
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Källa: The Fishing Daily