"Rather than encouraging sustainable fishing, subsidies have contributed to ever-greater capacity of fishing fleets and in turn to the depletion of valuable fish stocks," said Markus Knigge, research director of the Pew Environment Group's European marine programme.
Knigge was speaking yesterday (24 June) prior to the launch today of fishsubsidy.org, a new website put together by Pew and EU Transparency to "allow decision-makers and the public to see in detail how and where EU fishing subsidies have been spent," according to the two NGOs.
Spain tops funding charts
Between 1994 and 2006, 48% of all EU fisheries subsidies went to Spain alone, fishsubsidy.org reveals, the bulk of which (46% of the total) was used to build new vessels.
Moreover, 18 of the all-time top 25 recipient vessels are Spanish, and 21 out of the 25 most heavily-subsidised ports – including the top eight - are in Spain, the research shows.
The site presents data on EU fisheries subsides paid between 1994 and 2006 in searchable format according to country, region, fleet, port or individual vessel, with more functionalities to be added after today’s launch.
"The new website provides greater transparency, allowing all stakeholders to have informed discussions about the appropriate uses for subsidies to support the European fisheries sector," he said.
Fishsubsidy.org shows that the majority (38%) of EU funding for vessels went on new construction, with another 14% spent on modernising existing fleets. In comparison, 36% of subsidies were spent on reducing fleet sizes (scrapping).
Over-fishing widespread
The environmental NGO alleges that 88% of the EU’s fish stocks are currently being over-fished, citing catch limits that are higher than scientists advise, unselective fishing methods, lack of enforcement of rules governing illegal, unregulated unreported fishing among the root causes of the problem.
"Subsidies for modernisation maintain and even exacerbate overcapacity," Knigge said, explaining that "it becomes awkward when vessels are catching their annual quotas in three weeks."
"Fishing is a unique sector of the economy in that efficiency gains aren’t always a good thing. Modernisation subsidies aren't good if they exacerbate the problem of overcapacity," he explained.
"We want EU funding to go to more sustainable ways of fishing, and we hope this data will help to expose Europe's overcapacity problem," the researcher added.
Other environmental NGOs share the view that too much EU money is being spent on modernising fleets.
Ocean 2012, a network of organisations committed to preventing over-fishing in European waters, says EU fisheries are "characterised by fleets that are able to catch more fish than are available, catch limits that are frequently set too high for reasons of political expediency, opaque decision-making procedures and a culture of non-compliance with the rules".
National record-keeping 'not good enough'
Praising the cooperative attitude of the Commission during the website's development, Jack Thurston, co-founder of fishsubsidy.org, said the problem is not that the EU executive is negligent or incompetent, but that "record-keeping by the member states isn't as good as it should be".
Insisting that the site would not seek to present the information in a prejudicial manner, Thurston nevertheless said that "the Commission has its own problems with how it handles data and how it discloses it to us," citing misspellings of place and vessel names and software incompatibility among the main problems in this regard.
Towards sustainable fisheries
Meanwhile, EU fisheries ministers yesterday adopted conclusions on the sustainable development of Europe’s aquaculture at a meeting in Luxembourg, giving a fresh political impetus to the development of the sector.
Reacting to the news, the European Commission admitted that "the state of EU fish stocks continues to be dire," conceding that total allowable catches, or TACs, continue to be set "well above the level which scientists consider sustainable".
The EU executive insisted that the "underlying drivers" of this would be addressed in ongoing reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
The Commission is currently seeking stakeholders' views on reforms outlined in an April 2009 Green Paper, and will present proposals to member states and MEPs with a view to having the new CFP enter into force in 2013.
