Friday 15 July 2011

First response

FAL has issued a press release in response to the so-called Common Fisheries Policy reform, calling it, appropriately enough, The Sinking Titanic.

THE FISHERMEN’S ASSOCIATION LIMITED
Press Release

Common Fisheries Policy reform
The sinking Titanic

The present EC Common Fisheries Policy is – and from its very inauguration has always been - about exploitation, not conservation or management. It has certainly worked to the advantage of one or two member states, but its overall effect otherwise has been negative and destructive.

Not the least pernicious aspect is the extent to which a pseudo-ethical Euro-idealism has been used as a camouflage for naked national advantage.

Extract from FAL’s November 2000 Memorandum to the European Union Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development and Fisheries

The current reform proposals have nothing whatever to do with conservation, but with upholding, certainly as far as fishing is concerned, what the Commission believes to be the legally binding, unbreakable demands of the EU treaties --- that all species of fish within the waters of all EU maritime nations are a common resource, to which all EU member states have an equal right of access.

FAL does not believe for one moment that the Commission will allow any decentralisation of power, which is in the vice-like grip of the Brussels bureaucracy, to the member states.

This is a con-trick of colossal proportions, because the Commission’s so called reform of the CFP is in reality another stepping stone to achieve the EU’s strategic aim of creating a European Union fleet and the elimination of those of the maritime Nation States

Richard Benyon has stated that the publication of the Commission’s proposals is the start of 18 month’s negotiations with Commissioner Damanaki.

He needs to understand that however intense these negotiations may be they will not change one word of the EU treaties which are all directed against the survival of the UK fleet.


Roddy McColl
15 July 2011

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