The EU Court of Justice has ruled against Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Finland and Sweden for “overshooting their quotas”, making illegal overfishing still the main cause of law infringement committed by EU Member States.
According to the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) Scoreboard, published by the EU Commission in January, overfishing varied substantially from case to case, from less than one per cent to as much as 68 percent, as did the quantities of
fish concerned.
The Member States with
the worst records on overfishing in 2004 were Ireland and, for the second year running, Spain. More than two-thirds of the breach procedures currently pending against Member States are related to overfishing. The Commission also said states need to do better on collecting and handing over fishing data, although there has been some improvement on fleet management and implementation of the fisheries fund programmes.
The Scoreboard shows
that there was no substantial improvement on over catching, while only Denmark, Sweden and the UK fully met their obligations. The number of quotas exceeded declined slightly from two per cent
in 2003 to 1.8 per cent in
2004 (down from three per cent in 2002).
Data on reporting fishing effort continues to deteriorate according to the Scoreboard , and only two countries - Belgium and Sweden - met their obligations, compared with three in 2003. France, Ireland and Portugal failed, for the third year running, to transmit any data about their fleets’ fishing effort.
Serious infringements up
Regarding monitoring and control, the Scoreboard
says: “Having fallen to 6,756 cases in 2002, the number
of serious infringements
rose again in 2003 to 9,502 – well above the level of 2001. The most common infringement remains unauthorised fishing. Clearly, detection rates and the level of fines applied in such cases are failing to
deter wrongdoers.”
On fleet management, the 10 new Member States are reported to have complied fully with their obligations to the Community Fleet Register but some ‘old’ members -- Greece, Spain, France, Italy and Portugal -- have “again failed to submit the full information required”, the Commission said.
There has been progress
in the required re-measuring of fishing vessels. However, those which have yet to complete this process include Spain, France,
Italy, Poland and, to a lesser extent, the UK. With regard to the management regime, which monitors the
entry and exit ceilings of fishing vessels into fleets, the Scoreboard shows
that most Member States
have complied except for Belgium and Italy.
Infringement procedures
These failures by Member States, to ensure that the necessary measures are taken to prevent overfishing and the depletion of fish stocks, explain why more than 70 per cent (49 out of 69) of the infringement procedures now pending against Member States continue to relate to cases of overfishing. There are also eight in process against Member States for their failure to forward to the Commission information regarding catch and fishing effort.
The EU Court of Justice has handed down a number of judgements in infringement cases launched by the Commission since 2003, including a landmark decision against France for failing to implement technical measures. This judgement against France was for its failure to enforce a 1991 Court ruling, itself related to failing to implement a number of technical measures to prevent catches of young hake. This ruling should prove a strong incentive to Member States to comply with their obligations under the CFP. The Commission will decide shortly on whether France has met its obligations in this domain after the end of the six-month period on 12 January.
