Tough new penalties in EU fish deal

By Ann Cahill Europe Correspondent

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

FISHERMEN can lose their licences permanently and countries will lose their fish quota if they persistently break the rules.

As a result of major new penalties agreed by EU countries recreational fishing will be monitored for the first time, with anglers having to report any catches of species under severe threat, such as cod and blue fin tuna.

The EU’s 25-year-old common fish policy has failed to conserve fish stocks, despite huge amounts of money and lots of regulation. The European Court of Auditors blamed this partly on poor control and enforcement of the rules by member states.

For the first time the new measures will allow the commission to take action against member states who repeatedly fail to regulate their fishing fleets and the industry.

It modernises the system of monitoring, introducing satellite-based electronic logbook systems on board vessels over 12 meters who must report at regular intervals to centralised bases in member states.

Landings and the first sale of fish must be reported also to the central system, and the member state will cross-check them to ensure the correct information is being given at every stage.

For the first time, penalties will be similar in each EU country, putting an end to fishermen taking risks in the waters of countries with low penalties. Fines will range from a minimum of €5,000 to €300,000 for a first offence.

Under the penalty point system the masters and officers of a vessel will be automatically suspended from fishing for at least six months, and after six offences they will lose their fishing permit permanently.

As well as national fisheries inspectors there will be EU inspectors who can audit member states’ control systems and inspect vessels, ports, transport vehicles and premises to check if their reports are correct.

Funding to member states can be suspended for up to 18 months if their action, or failure to act, threatens the conservation of species or the operation of the control system. They can lose the money if they fail to resolve the problems.

For taking more fish than their quota a country can lose an even greater share of their quota the following year, and they can also lose quota for not enforcing the rules properly.

For the first time recreational fishing will be included in the monitoring system and landings of any species considered to be endangered, such as cod in the North Sea and Baltic Sea and blue fin tuna in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic will have to be reported. A proposal to count their landings as part of a national quota was dropped.

The Swedish presidency, who chaired the meeting, said that if member states believed recreational fisheries at sea was having a bad effect on stocks, they could introduce tighter rules.

Negotiations on the tough new control system, designed to stem the demise of Europe’s fish stocks went on into the early hours of yesterday in Luxembourg.

Irish Fisheries Minister Tony Killeen said the measures were not a threat to our fishermen as they now comply with the rules, but they would tackle illegal fishing by other fleets in Irish waters that were the major cause of the decline in fish stocks and quotas.

The Federation of Irish Fishermen welcomed the reforms. "This will go some way towards ensuring a level playing field on controls across the EU from net to plate, and for the first time there will be controls on more than just the fishermen," said FIF chairman Sean O’Donoghue.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Wednesday, October 21, 2009