The European Commission has rejected demands from French fishermen to increase their fishing quotas for certain species this year.
At a meeting in Brussels on Thursday with French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier and French fishing delegates, EU Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg said the quotas, set by the Council of Ministers each December, "could not be modified during the year."
He added that it was up to each member state to manage the quotas to get the "full benefits of their fishing fleets."
The response from Brussels comes one week after French fishermen blockaded three English Channel ports in protest of quota cuts for cod and other species. The blockade has since been lifted. Barnier announced last week that cod fishermen will receive financial aid.
In a statement released on Thursday, Borg said that conservation efforts initiated for cod and other species in recent years had "started to bear fruit."
"It is imperative to not exhaust the stocks and risk returning to the starting point," he stressed.
Borg's comments came on the heels of the European Commission's report on the future of Europe's fishing industry. Released on Wednesday, the green paper, delivered to trigger a debate on the EU's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), called for drastic cuts in the EU's 90,000-vessel fishing fleet and subsidies to safeguard the region's fishing industry.
"Fleets have the power to fish much more than can safely be removed without jeopardizing the future productivity of stocks," said the report.
The report underlines that imminent reform to the CFP must be a "sea change" that cuts "to the core reasons behind the vicious circle in which Europe's fisheries have been trapped in recent decades."
EU officials admitted five key failings in the CFP, including a deep-rooted problem of fleet overcapacity, imprecise policy objectives and a framework that fails to give "sufficient responsibility" to the industry.
The report said that 88 percent of European fish stocks are overfished, compared to a global average of 25 percent, and that 93 percent of North Sea cod stocks are fished before they can breed. The report pointed to the EU's 27 member nations for their role at in contributing to the overfishing and caving to political pressure.
"Sustained political and economic pressure has led industry and member states to request countless derogations, exceptions and specific measures," said the report.
A draft proposal for a new CFP isn't due until after 2013.
April 23, 2009
