RACs Active Across a Broad Front

A brief survey of their websites demonstrates that over the last year the regional advisory councils have been extremely active across a wide range of issues. These issues are of direct relevance to the fishing industry and NFFO members in particular. The NFFO is an active member of the North Sea, North West Waters, Pelagic and Long Distance RACs.

In the North Sea RAC, current issues include the impact of the cod recovery plan, ways to reduce discards in the whiting fishery, long-term management plans for nephrops and flatfish, the Dogger Bank wind-farm and possible designation as a Natura 2000 site, and the omega net gauge.

The North West Waters RAC is working on a major initiative to address perennial weaknesses in ICES stock assessments caused by data deficiencies that result in more precautionary TACs than would otherwise be the case. Amongst a wide range of other issues the RAC is also working on ways to improve the management regime in the Irish Sea and a tailored approach to management of the cod fishery in the Celtic Sea.

The focus in the Pelagic RAC has been on rational long-term management plans based on a shared view of the stocks between stakeholders and scientists and bringing stability back into the international regime, without which those plans are meaningless.

Likewise in the Long Distant RAC, the main area of work is on international agreements that provide access for EU fleets to important fisheries in Third Countries’ waters. The EU Norway annual fisheries agreement and the Greenland agreement are of particular importance to the UK and the NFFO.

All of the RACs have made major contributions to the debate on the future of the CFP after 2012, and in particular have been at the forefront of thinking on how decision-making responsibilities could be decentralised to the regions and to the fishing industry within an overarching CFP framework.

Although the RACs have provided a valuable forum in which fishermen and other stakeholders can exchange views and share information, as their name suggests, the primary role of the RACs is to prepare coherent and evidence-based advice to the European Commission on the management of the fisheries in their regions. All the signs are that the RACs are regarded as one of the success stories of the last reform of the CFP in 2002 and that their role will be enhanced in the forthcoming CFP reform. The excessively modest budgets allowed to fund the RACs have been a major constraint on the RACs ability to provide strong evidence based advice. The existing funding for RACs covers administrative, translation and travel costs but there is a real weakness in the RACs’ ability to do any substantial degree of preparatory and data gathering work. Strengthening this area of RAC work would result in better quality advice, integrating biological, economic and governance considerations.

The RACs over their five or six years of existence have certainly shown great promise but within the NFFO the view is that they have hardly begun to realise their full potential.

North Sea RAC
www.nsrac.org

North Western Waters RAC
www.nwwrac.org

Pelagic RAC
www.pelagic-rac.org

Long Distance RAC
www.ldrac.eu