Current state of the Common Fisheries Policy and prospects for the review in 2001-2

1.  Mr Stephen Wentworth (Fisheries Secretary) outlined the timetable for the review of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). The Commission had to produce a report by the end of 2001, but though its intentions were not altogether clear it now looked as though this would be subsumed in the Green Paper, expected in February/March. The Council then had to decide on the future shape of the CFP by the end of 2002.

2.  The Commission had already anticipated the review with a series of consultations, starting under former Commissioner Emma Bonino. A useful indication of the issues likely to be considered in the Green Paper was to be found in the Commission's report on regional meetings held in 1998-99 (Document 5051/00, COM(00)14) and in the final section of the Commission's Triennial Report on the CFP (Doc 5050/00, COM(00)15.

3.  An up-to-date statement of UK fisheries policy was contained in the Government's response to the 1999 Report Sea Fishing of the House of Commons Agriculture Committee. Since the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee's 1996 inquiry, the fisheries world had changed appreciably. MAFF's policy was to negotiate changes to the CFP whenever opportunities arose, not to save them up to 2002. Changes were being made all the time to the ways in which the CFP was managed and problems perceived. For example:

• The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) was developing a precautionary approach to the setting of Total Allowable Catches (TACs); it was not yet working perfectly, but the supporting scientific structure had been improved.

• There was growing evidence of longer term environmental problems which were not primarily due to over-fishing—e.g. raised sea temperatures: there had been an important paper in Nature on North Sea cod by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS).

• The Commission had been promoting closer dialogue between fishermen and scientists and administrators through regional workshops, one of which had looked at flatfish in the North Sea. The workshops had provided opportunities for frank exchange of views (including information about "cheating"). It was an important initiative, which deserved to be developed further (see Commission Communication of January 2000, Doc 5047/00, COM(99)747), but how to convert intensive stakeholder dialogue into legal instruments was far from straightforward. It could have implications for the EC Treaty.

• CEFAS had taken an initiative in placing popular articles in Fishing News and other journals.

• The Government had also encouraged bilateral contacts between UK fishermen and counterparts in other countries—e.g. meetings between Cornish, French, Irish, Belgian and Spanish fishermen, as well as a recent national-level meeting in Madrid involving fishing organisation representatives from Scotland and England and Spain.

• The Government had taken action to deal with specific problems in a practical way: in particular, the UK had persuaded other Member States, especially Ireland, and the Commission to launch the Irish Sea Cod Recovery Plan, the structure of which broke new ground, involving stakeholders and closing some areas to fishing at spawning time; the initiative had met with general acceptance and got off the ground quickly. It was hoped it would provide a model for action in other fisheries.

• Environmental factors were increasingly taken into account. Tuna drift nets were being phased out and an area (mainly off Scotland) had been closed to sand eel fishing, both changes principally on environmental grounds.

• From the beginning of the current year (2000), equipment had become mandatory for monitoring fishing activity by satellite in all EU Member States.

• A new system of designated ports for landings, with arrangements for notification of landings elsewhere, had been introduced by the UK.

• There was now a much higher level of cooperation between EU Member States over enforcement; this also included Norway.

• The major revision of the EU Technical Conservation Regulation (No. 850/98) had been introduced from 1 January 2000.

• The Multi-Annual Guidance Programme (MAGP) had been revised for a fourth time: an important new element in the UK's implementation was limiting of time at sea ("effort management") rather than relying solely on capacity reduction by decommissioning. The Commission was happy with the UK's approach.

• At the local level, fishermen were cooperating much more with each other, and to good effect in effort and quota management, rather than having to be directed by the Government all the time.

How radical is the review likely to be? Will alternative systems be considered?

4.  MAFF had long recognised that the problem was essentially industry over-capacity in relation to fish stocks. So long as that remained the problem, every other aspect of the CFP became ever more difficult—increasingly smaller fish were being caught and there was an incentive to cheat. The EC Fisheries Council had been trying to grapple with the problem, but fleet reductions agreed to date had not gone far enough. MAFF saw no prospect of a "quick fix", e.g. in terms of shifting to Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs); incentives to fleets to rationalise would, however, help.

5.  In the UK it was felt that some progress had been made. Quota allocations were now fixed, with fishermen no longer penalised by failure to catch their full quotas. Although a move to ITQs might in principle create a greater sense of ownership, it was doubtful whether it would in practice lead individuals to moderate their behaviour. Effort management—the allocation of days to a group of fishermen—provided an incentive to restructuring, i.e. to make more efficient use of a fishing fleet by reducing the number of vessels.

6.  The Commission was aware of the systems operated by countries outside the Community—e.g. Iceland, Canada and Norway. It was felt, however, that Europe posed particular problems because of the variety of stocks and fleets and the multiplicity of bilateral fishing rights, long predating the CFP. A huge intellectual effort across Europe was going into ways of improving the CFP, but the review was not expected to look like an ab initio review; it was fair to say that there were no alternative fisheries management systems that had not been looked at in the course of the various ongoing policy discussions.

7.  Suggestions that territorial fishing limits should be extended to, say, 24 miles (so that national fleets could "own" their fish) had implications which were more complex than might appear at first sight. They would inevitably open up questions of compensation for loss of traditional fishing rights, and could risk undermining the UK's 6-mile limit, within which it was exempt from the provisions of the CFP; the expectation that the existing limits would continue had been reaffirmed by the Commission during the Amsterdam Treaty negotiations. There was no evidence of substantial pressures from other Member States for a review of the 6-mile limit or of the 6-12-mile limit within which the UK enjoyed rights alongside historical rights for certain countries. For that reason it seemed unlikely that the Commission would include a discussion of major changes to the limits in the Green Paper. The Fisheries Minister, Mr Elliot Morley MP, had said he was confident that the limits would survive the CFP review.

8.   The precise rationale for such revision of territorial limits was not simple, in that it raised questions about Member States' interests in areas which in practice, because of migration of fish during different stages of their life cycle, required multilateral management. For example, priorities for conservation of plaice stocks could be distorted if the UK had no say in the management of important breeding grounds (the "plaice box") off the coast of the Netherlands and Belgium. Nevertheless, the question of territorial limits had been raised in the European Parliament, so in that sense it was on the table.

Scientific knowledge

9.  The quality of scientific advice available to the Commission had improved, and was credible enough to justify swift action, as in the recent case of mid-year reductions in herring quotas. Problems could be anticipated before they reached crisis levels, through the development of precautionary reference points and targets for fish stocks. The Commission favoured a precautionary approach, in which action was taken once early warning signals were apparent.

10.  The reliability of scientific evidence, however, varied from stock to stock, for a number of reasons. There were technical and biological uncertainties, e.g. in relation to cod stocks, because of their dispersal over a large area, and the interaction between short-term and long-term trends was problematical. Historically there had been fluctuations in stock levels which were not necessarily attributable to fishing and had never been satisfactorily explained—for instance a major surge in gadoid species (cod, haddock, whiting etc) during the 1960s. The overall trend during the 20th century had not been one of such extreme decline as might have been inferred from recent events.

11.  The worst case scenario was that stocks of commercially valuable fish would decline through over-fishing to the point where the industry was no longer viable. The experience of fishery closures in the North West Atlantic off Canada and the USA was a salutary warning. In time the fish could be expected to return, but possibly in a different mix—for example, the Canadians were now landing significant catches of crustaceans while their cod stocks had not recovered significantly.

Timeliness and timing of an inquiry

12.  It was difficult to answer the question when an inquiry by the Sub­Committee would have the most impact. If a Report were to come out at the same time as the Green Paper, i.e. around March, it could be a useful addition to the debate. Issuing a Report earlier was unlikely to have any influence on the Green Paper, since the Commission was essentially working on information and opinions which it had already gathered.