Greenpeace activists have targeted the EU Fisheries Council today in an attempt to urge ministers to rethink an agreement it feels could derail any chance of achieving improvements to EU fishing rules under a once in a decade reform.
The EU Fisheries Council is due to agree a general approach to the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. According to Greenpeace, this could lock the negotiating mandate of European ministers even before they have consulted with the European Parliament, which is also in the process of reviewing plans to change EU fishing rules.
Greenpeace EU fisheries policy director, Saskia Richartz, said: “Ministers have cooked up a dire plan for the Earth’s oceans behind closed doors. This reckless deal overseen by the Danish EU presidency is a spanner in the works that could derail the whole process of fisheries reform. This is no way to save fish or fishermen. The deal should be binned and the ministers should instead use the next six months to agree sensible measures to recover fish stocks and cut the bloated EU fishing fleet.”
Greenpeace’s main beef is that while the ministers acknowledge that urgent action is needed to reduce the oversized European fishing fleet, the deal doesn’t contain deadlines to reduce fishing powers to sustainable levels or any commitment concentrate action on parts of the fleet that are most responsible for overfishing.
The deal does recognise the need to phase out discarding, but Greenpeace argues that measures to achieve this are littered with loopholes.
