Overfishing is still one of the main law infrigment committed by the EU Member States, acording to the Common Fisheries Policy Scoreboard published last week by the European Commission
The report shows that more than two-thirds of the breach procedures currently pending against Member States are retated to overfishing. It says that the Court of Justice has recenlty ruled against Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Finland and Sweden for "overshoothing their quotas."
More progess is also need in the collation and timely transmission of data to the Commission.
However, the paper says that there has been some improvement on fleet management and implementation of the fisheries fund programmes.
Preventing overfishing
The Scoreboard shows that there was no substantial improvement in this area, though three Member States, Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom, fully met their obligations.
The number of quotas overshot declined slightly from 2% in 2003 to 1.8% in 2004 (down from 3% in 2002). Again, the extent of overfishing varied substantially from case to case, from less than 1% to as much as 68%, 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.
Reporting fishing effort continues to deteriorate according to the report, 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.
Monitoring and control
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."
Management of the fleet
The 10 new Member States are reported to fully complied with their obligations to the Community Fleet Register but some 'old members' -Greece, Spain, France, Italy and Portugal- have "againg failed to submit the full information required."
There has also been progress in the required re-measuring of fishing vessels. 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 the 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 over 70% (49 out of 69) of the infringement procedures now pending against Member States continue to relate to cases of overfishing. There are also eight currently engaged against Member States for their failure to forward to the Commission information regarding catch and fishing effort.
Since last year's Scoreboard was published, the Court of Justice of the European Community 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 ending of the 6-month period on 12 January.
