A coalition of fishermen, scientists and conservationists are preparing to resist the European Commission’s proposal for a blanket ban on driftnet fisheries, according to the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations (NFFO).
The NFFO claims that the main driver of this proposal appears to be the failure of Italy, and perhaps other EU States in the Mediterranean, to enforce existing legislation prohibiting the use of driftnets for specific species like swordfish.
The group also highlights that driftnets in some fisheries have high levels of bycatch of turtles, and cetaceans, but other driftnet fisheries have insignificant levels of bycatch.
If adopted, the blanket ban proposed would close all of the UK small scale driftnet fisheries for herring, mackerel, sole, bass, salmon, sardine and mullet, some of which are certificated by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). None of these fisheries has a significant unwanted bycatch problem, the NFFO affirms.
“When the UK in the past has failed to implement EU legislation, the Commission has not been slow to instigate infraction procedures against the UK Government. We are at a loss, therefore, to understand why the Commission is now reaching for additional legislation to address a specific problem in the Mediterranean, before it has exhausted the legal means available to it through infraction proceedings; especially when it is quite clear that this course will extinguish legitimate and sustainable small-scale fisheries in a number of member states. The maximum financial penalties are not minor up to GBP 256,000 per year for each area of non-compliance,” the NFFO said in a statement.
And it added: “Addressing problems with enforcement of the existing legislation by prohibiting our relatively benign fisheries would be high-handed in the extreme. As there is no suggestion of a significant problem of incidental bycatch in our driftnet fisheries, this legislation if pushed through co-decision could fairly be described as inappropriate, disproportionate, and in the final analysis, irrational. It is clearly easier for bureaucrats to reach for a pen to create new legislation than it is to ensure effective implementation of existing legislation. But that does not mean that the proposed ban is in any sense justifiable. It is certainly irresponsible.”
The federation claims that although the Commission says that it launched a web based consultation on the proposed ban, very few people seem to have heard about it and the advisory councils have not had an opportunity to express an opinion.
Therefore, the NFFO is calling on all those potentially affected by this blanket approach to push back against it.
“Already, a broad alliance of fishermen, fishermen’s organisation, conservationists and scientists are signalling that the Commission has taken a wrong turning. We can expect some powerful member states to resist this debased version of the precautionary approach. Some fishing gears in some circumstances do pose an unacceptable threat to wildlife and it is vital that bycatch problems in those fisheries are resolved. But to revert to a discredited blanket ban approach, with all the incidental collateral damage that will cause suggests that there is something far wrong in the Commission’s thinking as it limps to the end of this Commissioner’s period of tenure,” the NFFO’s statement concludes.
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