Major victory on EU Fisheries reform

The battle to reform one of the most iniquitous failings of the European Union made enormous progress last week.

It is not often that your hear a fishermen's representative and a marine environmentalist agreeing, let along on praising something the authorities have done, but that's what was broadcast on BBC Radio Four on Saturday morning after the European parliament gave final approval for major reforms of the Common Fisheries Policy which include replacing a policy which effectively forced fishermen to throw away millions of tons of fish every year with a ban on such discards.

The proportion of fish thrown back under the previous Common Fisheries policy varied between fisheries but it was everywhere large enough to count as a major environmental and economic disaster - the most recent estimate I have seen is that 23% of fish caught in EU fisheries are currently thrown back into the sea. Most of the round fish discarded will be dead or dying when they are returned to the sea.

The new policy which has been working its' way through the EU institutions is not yet perfect but there is every hope that it will be enormously better for fishermen, consumers, and the environment than the system it replaced.

There is a good report on this at

http://cfp-reformwatch.eu/2013/12/final-approval-for-the-common-fisheries-policy-reform/

Comments

Jim said…
"The new policy which has been working its' way through the EU institutions is not yet perfect but there is every hope that it will be enormously better for fishermen, consumers, and the environment than the system it replaced."

Well lets face it, it would have been an achievement to write home about if they had actually set out and managed to make it worse wouldn't it :)
4:41 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
Yes, making it even worse would in an ironic way have been a remarkable achievement.

However, that does not alter the fact that the new policy is not just less bad, but a very great improvement.
8:10 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more