Purely technical problems (with internet access rather than fishing nets) made it impossible to post for a couple of weeks but we are now back and will post with renewed vigour.

Some catching up is in order. The European Parliament voted on October 23 "on the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, EMFF. The proposal to subsidise new vessels was rejected. MEPs voted for a cap that would force member states to choose between new engines and new jobs for young people".

So, Mr Cameron et al, what happened to that idea of restoring some control over fisheries to the member states who are actually doing the fishing, assuming they are allowed to do so? Should they not be the ones to decide what they want to do and plan according to what they see as the best way forward for their fishing communities?

Tom Hay, the Honorary Chairman of FAL, continues in his efforts to educate our politicians. Here is a letter he wrote to Ian Hudghton an SNP representative in the European Parliament, where the party is a member of the Greens/European Free Alliance Group for voting and funding purposes and he, himself, sits on the Committee on Fisheries. A copy of the letter went to Struan Stevenson MEP, Vice-Chair of that Committee, who has been mentioned on this blog before.

The letter is being published with Tom's permission.

Dear Ian,

It was good to see you in the Waterside Inn this past Friday the 30th March 2012.

I am sure that the thoughts which gave rise to the statement you made publicly in Aviemore a few years ago that FAL was right, must revolve around your mind oftentimes, as you witness the continued deliberate destruction of the British White fish fleet, as it desperately struggles to survive, only a stone’s throw away from its almost inevitable collapse.

Be that as it may, I was visibly shaken, and astonished that you sought to proffer the thought, that the horrendous anti-British principle of “equal access” to our fishing grounds, and living marine resources might only be a threat. Every Nation which has become a member of the European Union both with, and without a maritime sea-board, has agreed by treaty to accept that principle.

The Commission has gone out of its way for years, to make it absolutely clear that the “acquis communautaire” for marine fisheries is free access to waters on a non discriminatory basis for all member states fleets, for all species of fish within the waters of all EU maritime nations, and that the “acquis” is not negotiable. Actual negotiations are limited to transitional arrangements or derogations, but for as long as the European Union continues, the “acquis communautaire” remains sacrosanct”.

It is outwith the bounds of EU law for a derogation to override a treaty. If a derogation could at any time wipe out a treaty, what would be the point of having a treaty in the first place? Furthermore one member state or an applicant nation such as Iceland, (if they are foolish enough) cannot amend a treaty without the unanimous consent of all the other member states. Treaty amendments have usually been made at inter governmental conferences which are usually held once every four years, although this time limit is not unalterable, but every head of state must be at the summit, and the decision taken must be unanimous.

If on the other hand the UK Parliament argued that a continuance of the present derogation was a vital national interest of ours, and the Spanish or any other member state argued that its discontinuation was equally a vital national interest of theirs, and if all negotiations failed, as could easily happen, and perhaps would most likely happen, the disagreement would have to be brought before the European Court of Justice. The Court would without the least shadow of doubt find that the derogation must end, and the full thrust of the “equal access” principle as prescribed by the treaties must be introduced.

The simple fact is therefore, however unpalatable it may be, that any other member state of the EU in this sequence of events, could veto the continuance of the derogation after 2012, but we cannot by veto ensure its continuance. 

The European Union’s plan of action to get rid of the British fishing fleet is quite clear, especially to those of us who have experienced the most awful persecution and humiliation of the 1983 derogation. The Brussels bureaucracy deviously planned and cleverly masterminded the concept, that our fishermen should be guided towards the establishment of a single European Union fleet, on a non discriminatory basis, with no increase in fishing effort without them ever knowing what was happening.

They believed that this could best be accomplished by successive steps, each craftily disguised as emphasising the need for more and more conservation, but which when taken together would inevitably and irreversibly lead to the annihilation of the British fleet. Thus with characteristic arrogance and contempt for ordinary hard working people, these lavishly paid and incompetent officials have assumed that British fishermen could be deluded, however reluctantly, into co-operating in their own extermination.

The European Court of Justice has stated that the Community system of national quotas is a derogation from the general rule of equal conditions of access to fishery resources, and the principle of non-discrimination laid down in Article 40(3) of the treaty. I have a top secret, classified, confidential document, which was leaked to me from a government department which clearly states this. I am prepared to let you see it sometime if you should so wish. So how can the 1983 fisheries agreement be the Common Fisheries Policy, and a derogation from it at the same time? Those who knowingly continue to propagate this lie, are highly skilled in the deception, since it serves the purpose of deceiving our fishermen into believing that the Common Fisheries Policy can be reformed, when indeed it cannot!

In Fishupdate.com October 17 2003, not all that long after the end of the 2002 derogation, it was reported from the EU Fisheries Conference in Southern Ireland, and I quote --- Spanish fishermen will be given access to some of Europe’s most sensitive fishing grounds under a deal agreed by EU Fisheries Ministers. They have agreed to open almost 10,000 square miles off the Irish coast, until now been deemed environmentally sensitive. The deal to allow access to a quarter of the restricted area ignored opposition from Ireland, Britain, France and Portugal. The Irish Box, a 50 mile exclusion zone round the Irish coast has been seen as one of the most important spawning and nursery grounds in EU waters. 

Neil Parish MEP, Conservative Spokesman on Fisheries in the European Parliament, said “ This decision is totally hypocritical. The European Commission is telling everyone that whitefish stocks are perilously low, and have demanded quota cuts and reductions in time at sea, for British fishermen etc. etc…..until Fisheries Commissioner Franz Fischler is quoted as having said --- “Spain and Portugal have now been fully integrated into the CFP, all rules that could be considered as discriminatory have been abolished and from now on, EU measures will apply equally to all. The new regime legally brings to an end the discriminatory restrictions on access following the full integration of Spain and Portugal into the Common Fisheries Policy.”

Can we really expect our so called European Partners to whom we have given such valuable treaty guarantees to negotiate their cancellation, and thus surrender their assurance of unfettered access to some of the richest fishing grounds in the world. I think not. The stark reality which yawns before our fishermen is the fact that they have to be driven out of their own fishing grounds to let the rest of the member states fishermen predominate in British waters.

The only way to rescue the British fishing industry, and having it re-established as it once was, is through the restoration of National Control by a United Kingdom Act of Parliament, over those waters legally under our jurisdiction in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the sea 1982.

I am sending a copy of this letter to Struan Stevenson MEP. 

I have not the slightest doubt that FAL will be accredited a station of great honour, in the annals of history for telling British fishermen the truth.

Yours sincerely,


Thomas Hay. Hon. Chairman FAL 

So far, there has been no reply and Tom's exposition of the Common Fisheries Policy as it really is has not been acknowledged, refuted or even discussed. 

This posting has to start with an apology. For various reasons there was a long break in updates. The reasons have now been dealt with and the blog will resume with a vengeance.

Our attention has been called to yet another self-styled expert on the fishing industry, to wit, Chris Davies the Liberal-Democrat MEP, a man who, as his CV shows, has been in politics or political PR all his working life. In this he resembles a number of other politicians today.

He is the co-ordinator on the Committee of Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. He was Rapporteur for the main Regulation and the man who set up the inanely named (to go with the inanely grinning photo) Fish for the Future committee.

What can one say about somebody who seriously writes this sort of stuff:

If fish stocks are to recover then the tonnage of the fish caught must be temporarily reduced, and we have to make use of the financially less attractive fish that are caught but are presently discarded. More fish have got to have a chance to breed before they are caught. In some fisheries this will mean that there must be some pain in order to secure long term gain, and that will arouse strong opposition.

There is a real danger that the Commission’s reforms will be hijacked by vested interests who think only of the short term. The Coalition Government in the UK will be strongly in favour I believe, but in the Council of Ministers strong opposition can be expected from Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Portugal and maybe Poland. I expect this pattern will be replicated in the European Parliament, which has equal decision-making powers.

It is easy to understand why he has been referred to as self-styled expert. The whole posting is full of meaningless waffle of this kind, all of it meant to promote himself as the man who will save Europe's fish and fishermen. After all, nobody else has noticed that things were not quite what they ought to be.

To be fair, his committee did produce a long report with many amendments to the Commission's proposals. The amendments seem to take somewhat vague proposals and add words such as "sustainable" to make them even less likely to be put into effect. But it is possible that one or two of our readers who might plough through this document will find something useful in it. If so, could you let us know through the Comments system?

Of course, it does not occur to Chris Davies or his committee that the CFP, which is an entirely political construct whose aim is the creation of a single European fisheries and in which decisions are taken at the centre through political negotiations cannot possibly deliver on any of the promises of sustainable fisheries or scientific conservation, never mind the notion of a sensibly developing fisheries industry.

Still, we are glad to see that Mr Davies remains very satisfied with his work though we are disturbed by his worries that sensible ideas like his will be overcome by everybody else's selfishness and short-termism.

In the European Parliament all the amendments will eventually be considered by the Fisheries Committee, and its membership has a bias towards Spanish, French and Italian MEPs who are not the most progressive. Meanwhile, the Commissioner tells me that Fisheries Ministers on the Council seem once again to be ignoring the big picture about the dire state of our seas and defending instead the narrow interests of their large scale fishermen. It wouldn’t be so bad if the representatives of the nations only minimally involved in fishing were to speak up in favour of reform, but so far they are not getting involved.

We shall see how the debate progresses over the next few months. Woody Allen once said “the world is run by the people who turn up”. In this instance the wrong people seem to be there.

Please note that throw-away comment about Woody Allen, designed to show what a cool guy Chris Davies is: he knows all about films and even someone who was ever so trendy ... oh, about twenty years ago. Still, he is not far wrong: the wrong people do seem to turn up for the CFP debates, not least self-satisfied and ignorant MEPs.

Let us look back to 2003. The then Chairman of FAL, Tom Hay, gave the following presentation to the All-Party Parliamentary Fisheries Group:

Chairman

In "Fishing News" 8th November last year, the Chairman of the Fisheries Committee in the EU Parliament, Struan Stevenson, stated categorically that the draconian proposals, which are now a reality, had nothing to do with conservation.

They were he said part of a European "Federalist " agenda to hand over the bulk of European fishing to Spain. The Commission will exploit scientific recommendations, he continued, to close down the British white fish sector as a golden opportunity to help them meet their target capacity cuts in one fell swoop, and thus enable Spain, with the largest fleet to dominate the fishing industry.

Ten years previous to this, on 11th June 1992 the Commission sent across to the Scalloway College in Shetland a lady called Ruth Albuquerque, one of their senior Cabinet Members responsible for Fisheries Policy, who warned the industry that the way forward as envisaged by the Commission for the re-structure of the industry would involve thousands of fishermen losing their jobs.

At that time fish of all species were plentiful on most if not all of the fishing grounds, in the North Sea and West Coast waters around the UK. Sadly however through clever manipulation by MAAF, and the Scottish Office, and in collaboration with certain persons within the industry this ominous threat was quickly downplayed, and finally forgotten altogether.

The Spanish Treaty of Accession makes it absolutely clear that from 1st January 2003, Spanish fishermen as well as Portuguese have the right of "Equal Access" without discrimination to a "Common Resource" in all "European Waters" beyond the 12 mile zone, including the North Sea. This is confirmed by the legal experts of the Council Working Party, and in reference to the exclusion of Spanish and Portuguese fleets for 16 years, Fisheries Minister Miguel Arias Canete said that the European Commission had finally put an end to discrimination against the Spanish fleet in Community waters.

Let us not be deceived again. Political assurances to the contrary are only temporary partial deliverances from the exacting legal demands of the Treaties. The Treaties are brutally clear. All fish within the waters of EU maritime nations are a common resource to which all EU states have an "Equal Right of Access". Everything else is a cruel deception, intended to soften, temporarily, the force of the real disaster for British fishermen, until they are judged to be so weakened that they will be unable to resist the continuing treachery of those disloyal politicians who are eager to sacrifice British fishermen on the altar of their fantasies of a "United Europe".

The savagery of the cuts in Quota over recent years, and now the limited amount of days per month our fishermen are allowed to go to sea, have been camouflaged by Franz Fischler and the British government, in a skilful and cynical manner to justify their fictitious claims of a desperate conservation crisis in cod stocks. They have assumed that this unscrupulous attempt to conceal their disgraceful and ruinous plans to destroy the British fleet, and thus make room for the Spanish, the Portuguese, and new entrants such as Poland and the Baltic States in 2004, would be readily accepted by fishermen, just as some of their leaders, who have fallen for this clever trick for years, have been conned into believing. Franz Fischler and New Labour are wrong! They are fooling no one but themselves.

Those who seek to justify the disgraceful surrender of one of our greatest National assets, have found no expedient too contemptible, and no deceit too mean, in their desperate efforts to conceal the grim reality of what has been done to our fishermen, and to our people, to whom those vast stocks of fish within our legally held Exclusive Fishing Zone rightly belong.

British fishing grounds, British fishing rights, and British fish stocks are the indisputable possession of the British people according to British, and International Law. No politician had the right to surrender their property without their consent. But they did, and the stark reality which now faces our fishermen as a result is, that they have to be driven out of what should be their own fishing grounds, to let the others in.

Looking back through Hansard, I find a proud role of honour of Labour M.P's who warned from the very beginning in the early seventies, of the disastrous consequences, which are now upon us, of accepting the bizarre, ruinous, anti-British doctrine that all fish under the jurisdiction of Member States were to become a "Common Resource" to which all Common Market fishermen had an "Equal Right of Access". A doctrine which is being laughed at outside the European Empire of waste and corruption. Tony Blair would call these honourable, and loyal servants of the British people, unpatriotic xenophobic propagandists. He is again deluding nobody but himself.

FAL has researched this matter exhaustively in conjunction with "Save Britain's Fish", and on the basis of the most authoritative legal testimony. We are thoroughly convinced that the only possible way of rescuing the British Fishing industry from certain disaster, is through the restoration of National control by a United Kingdom Act of Parliament, over these waters legally under our jurisdiction, in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982.

There is no other way!

That Tom Hay should speak those fighting words should surprise no-one. The problem we face concerns Struan Stevenson who also seemed to be using fighting words in 2002. He is now the Senior Vice President of the European Parliament Fisheries Committee (how many Vice Presidents does one committee need?) and Rapporteur for the Report for the Common Organization of the Market. Does he still hold the views he expressed nine years ago? We await an answer from the long-standing member of the European Parliament with interest.

This [and in French] does not exactly side-step the procedures but it certainly leaves a worse stink than rotting fish.

As the Commission has now presented their proposal on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy, the reform package will go to the European Parliament (EP) and Council.

In the EP, each legal proposal from the Commission is appointed to a member of the Parliament (MEP), who becomes the rapporteur who drafts a report with amendments to the Commission’s proposal. Being the rapporteur for a report gives a lot of influence over the legislative process.

This Wednesday afternoon, coordinators (one MEP from each political group) in the EP’s fisheries committee met to distribute the reports in the CFP reform package presented today by the European Commission.

As the result of an unannounced move, all six reports in the CFP package will be given to three groups: EPP, ECR and ALDE.

The other groups are not happy, as well they might not be. Not just the Greens but UKIP and their groupings have been left out of this little carve-up.