March 2012 - European fisheries ministers meeting in Brussels to discuss the reform of EU fishing rules are expected to ignore the critical imbalance between the bloated size of EU fleets and dwindling stocks, said Greenpeace. Ministers are likely to reach an agreement on how to manage the impact of the EU's Common Fisheries Policy on fishing in foreign waters.
The Greenpeace ship the Arctic Sunrise is currently off the coast of West Africa, near Senegal and Mauritania, where it has been involved in actions to highlight the destructive impact of European overfishing.
The EU fisheries Council is expected to recognise the right of fishermen in foreign coastal nations to retain priority access to local fishing grounds and to only allow European and other foreign vessels the option of fishing unclaimed quotas within sustainable levels. However, ministers will likely omit any reference to agreed international commitments on the reduction of fleet capacity. The EU acknowledges that there are simply far too many powerful and destructive vessels for the amount of fish left in the sea. As recently as autumn 2011, the EU joined other countries in the UN General Assembly in a pledge to "urgently reduce the capacity of the world's fishing fleets to levels commensurate with the sustainability of fish stocks."
Ministers will also debate rules to prohibit the damaging practice of discarding unwanted catches, as well as a new fisheries subsidy regime and common market rules.
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