The European Commission has adopted an Action Plan in an attempt to address shortcomings in the Latvian fisheries control system.
The scheme, which was adopted at the end of May, has been designed jointly with the Latvian authorities following the Commission’s audits of the Latvian fisheries control system. It will help reinforce the control system and aims to ensure that Latvia has set up an effective administrative structure, with appropriate IT systems, and has allocated the resources at its disposal. It will also seek to ensure that Latvia has improved its catch and effort registration system and undertaken risk-based control activities to implement the Common Fisheries Policy and contribute towards sustainable fisheries.
The Plan consolidates the measures that the Latvian Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development has started to implement this year. These include the allocation of additional resources to fisheries control and the restructuring of the catch data registration system. The work on ensuring remote access to the Vessel Monitoring System and to electronic logbook data has already started with the assistance of EU funding. Capacity building of the control system will help compliance with EU law starting at sea and encompassing each fish management stage after the landing in ports. The Plan will ultimately benefit the fishermen – an improved enforcement of quota uptake monitoring will make fish stocks more abundant and allow fishermen to benefit from a level playing field when accessing fisheries resources.
Action plans are a cooperative instrument to ensure implementation of fisheries control policy. It is deemed by the EU to be the most effective method to achieve maximum results in the shortest time period.
2010-2013 The Scottish White Fish Producers’ Association