Control Regulation Moving Fast

The new EU Control Regulation is moving rapidly towards adoption by the Council of Ministers in October, raising fears that this hectic timetable will result in a botched job.

The Commission is “desperate” to get the new legislation on the statute books before the Lisbon process brings co-decision making with the European Parliament. With around 109 articles covering everything from e-logbooks to recreational fishing, this piece of legislation has the capacity to affect the operations of every vessel in the fleet.

We know from bitter experience that rules devised and agreed in this kind of hothouse atmosphere often turn out to be seriously flawed. Discussions in Brussels on the latest compromise document will begin on 10th September and conclude on the 18th September. The NFFO has arranged a meeting with Defra officials on 2nd September to discuss the central issues.

Margin of  Tolerance

Of particular concern, despite the issue being raised by the industry, every regional advisory council and a number of member states, is the fact that the Commission has resisted all pressures to address the problem of the unachievable margin of tolerance between logbook estimates of catch and the definitive landing declaration. Nothing could speak more eloquently of the distance and contrast between the Commission in DG Mare’s offices in Brussels and the experience in a fish-room aboard a pitching vessel in poor conditions, with a crew and skipper juggling earning a living, meeting catch composition rules, complying with quotas and a hundred technical rules.

 The bottom line is that: It is not possible for fishermen, operating in these conditions to consistently make a catch estimate within 8% or 10% margin of tolerance across all the species. This exposes the skipper to the threat of prosecution on a regular and repeated basis. The fact that the Commission has every rejected reasoned request to deal with this issue can only confirm in the eyes of a working fisherman that it is dealing with a remote, unresponsive, uncomprehending system, itself overdue for reform.

Marine Protected Areas

Another area of concern lies with the use of the Control Regulation to apply conditions that will apply to fishing vessels operating in or near marine protected areas. This very premature and clumsy approach ignores the fact that the management regimes for MPAs have yet to be agreed.  MPA management regimes could range from measures that require complete closure of an area, through to those that would have a minimal impact on fishing.  A requirement in the proposal that vessels’ speed in the hurriedly renamed “fishing restricted areas” must remain above 7 knots, fails the first rule of rules: that the rule must be capable of being complied with. Some fishing vessels are not capable of speeds in excess of 7 knots.

All this confirms that there is a lot to be concerned with in this complex, poorly thought through and hurried regulation.

And the most fundamental question missed in the rush to agree the new Control Regulation is why we are making such efforts to shore up the micromanagement system? After all the Commission’s Green Paper on CFP reform makes it very clear, that this approach has failed European fisheries comprehensively.